


Father and Son

by VampireBadger



Category: Assassin's Creed - All Media Types
Genre: F/M, Father-Son Relationship, Flashbacks, Retelling of AC1-AC3, William is nice
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-12-27
Updated: 2018-08-23
Packaged: 2019-02-22 22:12:56
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 19
Words: 32,794
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13176279
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/VampireBadger/pseuds/VampireBadger
Summary: When Desmond is six years old, the Farm where he's lived his whole life is destroyed. The Templars attack, and he and his dad are the only two survivors. They leave the Assassins, go on the run, and Desmond is raised like any other normal kid. Until he's kidnapped by Templars, and forced into an Animus. As Desmond struggles to keep his sanity, William tears across two continents looking for him.Mostly follows the events of AC1 through AC3.





	1. Chapter 1

 

April 12, 1993   
  
-//-   
  
There are nights when Desmond hangs out his window, listening to the hum of the generators, watching the stars come out. It's not like there's much else to do here. It's not like he's missing out on anything by just sitting there watching. He's six, and this whole place is boring. There's nothing to do here but wait to grow up, and that's going to take forever.   
  
His dad says it takes millions of years for the light from a star to get all the way down to them on Earth. If the stars can wait that long, then maybe Desmond can learn to be patient too.   
  
One clear summer night, while he's hanging out his window and watching the stars, he hears soft noises behind him, and then footsteps.   
  
“Desmond…”   
  
“ _ Dad _ ,” Desmond says, without turning around. “How come I’ve never seen a shooting star?”   
  
“Desmond, I’m not going to keep picking up after you forever. Your mom put your hamper in here for a reason, and you’re old enough to use it now.”   
  
“But Dad, how  _ come _ ?”   
  
He hears his dad sigh, and then the soft rustling sounds of his clothes being put into the hamper. Desmond knows he’s supposed to use it, but why does he have to put his clothes in there when he’s just going to wear them again? Still, he doesn’t want to get in trouble, so he’s squirming nervously when his dad finally puts his hand on his shoulders and crouches down next to him. “Desmond,” he says, very calmly.   
  
“Yea?”   
  
“Hamper.” His dad squeezes a little, then looks past Desmond out the window. “Now. What were you asking about stars?”   
  
“I’ve  _ never  _ seen a shooting star,” Desmond says. “And I look every night.”   
  
“Not every night.”   
  
“Most nights.”   
  
“Well, they don’t happen that often,” his dad tells him. “But maybe we can do some research and look into when some shooting stars will be coming by, okay?”   
  
“Okay.”   
  
“And in the meantime, you can go to bed.”   
  
“But—”   
  
“No buts,” his dad says, and in one movement he stands and lifts Desmond up. “It’s past your bedtime.”   
  
Desmond holds on tight, and for a second as his dad lowers him down to bed, before Desmond lets go, he’s holding on tight too, and Desmond feels safe. Then the moment passes, and Desmond curls down into bed as his dad’s grip turns into a hug. “Sleep tight.”   
  
So Desmond shuts his eyes dutifully, and before too long, drifts off to sleep. It isn’t exactly an unusual night, and this has happened so many times before he’s lost count. It’s just what happens. Every night, his dad comes in, and tucks him into bed, and then Desmond sleeps until morning, when it’s usually his dad that comes to wake him up again.    
  
Only tonight it doesn’t quite work out like that. Desmond doesn’t  _ quite  _ manage to fall asleep before something wakes him back up. For a while, he just stays in bed, trying and failing to fall asleep, before all of a sudden it just pops into his head—the generator is off.    
  
He pushes his blankets off and goes back to the window, squinting at the generator to see if maybe it’s broken or something. It’s dark, though, and he can’t make out any details. It’s just off, for some reason. Desmond is just about to leave, maybe go back to bed, but at the last second he stops, face breaking into a grin. He can see something bright off in the distance, a shooting star streaking across the sky.   
  
“Desmond—”   
  
The door bursts open, his dad rushes across the room to him.   
  
“Dad, it’s a shooting star!”   
  
“No it isn’t. Desmond, come here.”   
  
“But Dad—”   
  
“ _ Now _ .”   
  
A trembly chill runs down Desmond’s spine. He takes a confused step back, and as soon as he moves, his dad picks him up and starts moving, hurrying away as fast as he can. Desmond has never seen his dad act like this, especially not in the middle of the night, and the confusion and the fear is enough to keep him quiet as he’s carried out of the house, away—   
  
The shooting star is coming closer, close enough to see that it’s  _ not  _ a shooting star. It’s something else, but Desmond isn’t sure  _ what  _ until it hits. And then everything is—it’s on fire, and people are screaming, and suddenly there are men, with guns…   
  
“ _ Dad _ ,” Desmond whispers, pressing closer.   
  
“It’s okay.” Maybe they’re far enough away now, because his dad takes a second to press his hand to his shoulder, offering at least some comfort. “It’s going to be okay.”   
  
Desmond doesn’t think it is, though. He looks back at the farm as it fades away into the distance, as they keep running, and soon he can’t see it at all. He can just… smell the smoke. And hear the screaming. And it’s not okay.

-//-

September 1, 2012

-//-

Desmond struggles to consciousness with the feeling of violence burning the back of his throat and inside of his mouth. The coppery tang of blood is everywhere, it makes him want to throw up only his head is throbbing—the aftereffect of a hit to the head he can’t remember yet—and something tells him it’s a bad idea, throwing up when his head hurts like this.   
  
He doesn’t quite understand what’s going on yet. Doesn’t understand where he is or what happened or what he’s  _ doing _ . It’s like a bad dream, he just keeps moving forward, keeps fighting, only he doesn’t know who he’s fighting or why or how, just that it feels right in a way that doesn’t belong to him.   
  
As he slowly starts to come awake, it starts to feel more jarring. Everything he’s seeing and doing and feeling is wrong, and he—the worst part of it is that  _ it’s not him _ . He’s not himself and he doesn’t know what that means but he knows he can’t even  _ think  _ right, there’s something else hijacking his thoughts and it feels like his head is just going to split in two.   
  
And then all at once, it clears. Whatever he’d been seeing, feeling, doing, it dissolves around him like dew in the morning, and Desmond realizes that splitting feeling in his head is because he’s smashed it into something. A curved screen stretches over his head and out of sight in his peripheral vision—when Desmond turns, he sees that it connects to the odd, slab of a bed he’s lying on.   
  
Wincing, he slides down and out from under the screen, sitting up and rubbing at his head. No blood, at least, but it feels like he’s going to get a  _ fantastic  _ bruise right in the middle of his forehead. Great.    
  
But it’s not like that’s his biggest problem right now. Desmond can’t even figure out what his biggest problem is—whether it’s… whatever it is he’d woken up to, or the fact that he has no idea where he is right now, or the stern looking man standing at the far end of the table.   
  
“Mr. Miles,” he says, voice absolutely dripping with distaste.   
  
“Um—” Desmond squints at him and frowns. “What?” Then he shakes his head, sharply (and stops when he realizes what a painful mistake that was for his poor, aching head). As the confusion grows, another emotion is surging up behind it.   
  
Anger.   
  
“What the fuck is going on here?” Desmond demands. “What are you—you can’t just—what are you doing, going around kidnapping people off the street!” His memories of whatever had led up to him waking up here are disjointed and fuzzy, a jigsaw puzzle broken apart and dumped out on the floor. But it doesn’t take a genius to figure out that this man, and the woman standing off to the side and just behind him, are probably the reason he’s here right now. Some kind of crazy mad scientist shit.   
  
“Sit down, Mr. Miles,” the man in the lab coat says, and just his voice by itself—never mind the actual words—is nasty. It makes Desmond’s skin crawl. “I’m trying to explain this to you.”   
  
“Sit down?” Desmond repeats, almost incredulous. “No, I’m not—listen, you snatched me up off the street, and I’m not going to just sit down and accept it!”   
  
“Sit  _ down _ , Mr. Miles,” the man says again, and his calm repetition is just pissing Desmond off even more. He takes a step forward, but then stops when the woman gives him a short, sharp shake of the head.  _ No _ .    
  
Desmond looks at her, stares. Her expression is unreadable, too complicated for Desmond to even start to figure out why she’s telling him no. He has some guesses, though, and the one that’s bothering him the most right now is that this man is more dangerous than he looks. Maybe it’s better to stay where he is until he knows what’s going on. And how much danger he’s in.    
  
“Okay,” he says slowly, sitting back down, arms crossed. “I’m listening, just—explain what’s going on.”   
  
The man responds with a raised eyebrow and a smug curl of his lip that would have made Desmond hate him on the spot, if that hadn’t already been pretty well taken care of. “Well,” he says. “It’s about time you calmed down.”   
  
Desmond seethes, and clenches his jaw to keep from saying anything.   
  
“My name,” the man says, striking an attitude of pompous superiority, hands clasped behind his back and chin thrust slightly upward, “Is Warren Vidic. This is my assistant, Miss Stillman.”   
  
“Lucy,” she says, and then turns just in time to avoid an irritated look from her boss. It looks like she’s had practice in avoiding his annoyance.    
  
“And this is called an animus,” Vidic continues, when he’s done frowning at Lucy. “It’s a machine designed for reliving the memories of your ancestors. You see, feel, and experience history in just the way they did, allowing us to discover whatever secrets they may have left behind.”   
  
Desmond stares at him. Really?  _ Really _ ? “No,” he says, after a second. “But—what does it actually do?” Because what Vidic’s describing isn’t remotely possible, and Desmond either misunderstood, or he’s being held captive by someone that’s completely delusional.   
  
“Mr. Miles,” Vidic says, tone unbearably smug. “That is exactly what it does. When you woke up—how else would you describe what you experienced?”   
  
That actually makes Desmond go quiet for a minute. A slight, involuntary shiver runs down his back, and it’s suddenly hard to look at Vidic. He hadn’t entirely been himself then, had he? It’s… sort of hard to process what exactly had been going on, but it had definitely been… it was… well, Vidic’s explanation of living someone else’s life does seem just about crazy enough to explain what he experienced in that thing. In the animus.   
  
“There,” Vidic says. “You see? In any case, we are particularly interested in one of your ancestors, a man named Altair, and an artifact that we believed he stumbled on sometime during the crusades.”   
  
“So—” The  _ crusades _ ? Desmond has been picturing something a little more recent when Vidic says ancestor. The grandparents he never met, maybe, or their parents, maybe a couple more generations back. He can’t imagine how many great-great-etc-grandparents lie between him and any ancestor that would have lived through the crusades. “So… okay. But—why? And what’s this artifact supposed to be?” He can’t imagine anything that would have been around back then that would motivate someone to invent the animus (presumably in secret) and then start kidnapping people off the street. Maybe some kind of religious relic? He can just about imagine some extremist deciding that all this made sense, but… well, somehow Vidic doesn’t quite strike him as that sort of man.   
  
“That doesn’t matter,” Vidic tells him. “Not to you, in any case. All you need to do is travel through his memories until he finds the artifact—and we get the information about it that we need.”   
  
“And after that?” Desmond asks, voice leaden. He doesn’t have any real expectation that all this is going to end well.   
  
“After that, we let you go,” Vidic says. Desmond very nearly rolls his eyes, despite the fact that he’s twenty five years old, he’s not a kid being told to wash the dishes. “It’s either that or we induce a medical coma and force you through the animus. It’s your choice, Mr. Miles.”   
  
For some reason, Desmond picks that—out of all the other insane, awful things going on right now—to get really irritated by. “And I don’t know why you keep saying that,” he says, the words coming out more snappish than is probably good for him right now. But he’s scared of the idea of being forced into a coma, he’s scared of what happens in his head when he’s in the animus, and he’s scared of what’s going to happen to him when they find this artifact they’re looking for. Maybe that’s why he’s latching onto this little thing.   
  
Vidic’s look of confusion is a very minor victory. “Saying what?”   
  
“Miles,” Desmond says. “That’s not my name.”   
  
The look vanishes far too quickly. Vidic’s smug expression settles back onto his face. “There’s an awful lot you don’t know about your own past,” he says. “Isn’t there?”   
  
“I…” He’s never thought of it before, or at least… not in a very long time. But when Vidic asks that question, a memory long buried and almost forgotten stirs somewhere in the back of his mind. Of being very young, and very scared, and fleeing something terrible in the dead of night. Desmond trails off, confused, and drops his gaze so he won’t have to watch Vidic’s expression any longer.   
  
“If you’re done with the dramatics,” Vidic says (and Desmond almost wants to hit him for using that word, because how is he supposed to react to all this). “We’ll get started now. Time to get into the animus, Mr. Miles.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Welcome to my attempt at figuring out how writing works! The fic is already finished so updates should come pretty regularly, but I can't promise they'll be any good.


	2. Chapter 2

April 14, 1993

-//-

Two states away and thirty six hours later, William decides they’re probably safe enough to stop for a few hours. He finds them a hotel in a nondescript suburban town, and gets a room under a false name. A new name, maybe. They can’t be Miles anymore, not ever again, because even if they’re very lucky and the Templars think they’re dead, the name Miles popping up in the wrong place is going to draw eyes to them. They can’t afford that kind of attention, the kind of attention that might start connecting the dots, asking questions, and eventually finishing what they’d started two days ago.

Desmond stopped crying hours ago. He stopped talking too, and he’s just been following along with William, doing as he’s told but not really reacting. He’s terrified or traumatized or shell shocked, William has no idea which, but he’s just seen his home burned and his neighbors killed, so that’s entirely understandable. 

But at least he’s alive. At least they’re both alive. William highly doubts there’s anyone else from the Farm that can say that. Not after the Templars came in the way they did, cutting power, shooting rockets, running straight into the heart of their little community and destroying… everything.

William knows no one else will be left. He knows no one else would have dreamed of running, and part of him can’t stand the guilt that comes from that. He’s an Assassin, and Assassins don’t run from Templars. They fight, even in the face of insurmountable odds. But William isn’t just an Assassin, he’s a father, and he can’t regret his choice to save his son. He couldn’t save anyone else, but his son is alive, and that’s a starting point.

In the relative privacy and safety of their room, William leads Desmond to the bed and lifts him up onto it with slow, careful movements. He kneels in front of him, holding Desmond’s hands in his. He’s relieved when Desmond stirs a little and focuses on him.

The only problem is, William has no idea where to start.

“Desmond,” he says carefully. “You should know—”

“Can you close the window?” Desmond interrupts. 

“Sorry?”

Desmond makes a pained face and closes his eyes. “Close the window  _ please _ ?” he asks. “I don’t wanna see the stars anymore.”

“It’s okay,” William says. It’ll be safer with the curtains pulled, it’ll be harder for anyone to see them, but Desmond is terrified of something he loved a week ago, and that’s a heavy burden for a six year old to bear. “What happened at the Farm, that was because of bad people. But we’re far away now. And that’s not going to happen again.” If nothing else, he knew the Templars would come after them in a different way next time. They wouldn’t use a method William would expect.

“There was a shooting star,” Desmond says, his voice wavering, eyes wet. “And I waited  _ forever  _ to see one, and then it wasn’t a star and everything blew up.”

“Desmond…”

“ _Everything_.”

“I know, Desmond, and that’s—it’s awful. It really is. But you can’t be afraid—”

“What about Mom?”

William has been trying not to think about that. He’d saved his son but left his wife, and he  _ knows  _ she’d have agreed with him that saving Desmond was the most important thing, but she’s his wife. And William has no idea what happened to her. Did she die in the initial explosion? In the fighting that followed? He looks at Desmond, and shakes his head.

Very slowly, almost like he’s melting, Desmond slides forward on the bed and into William’s arms. He’s trembling as William folds him into a tight hug, small and scared and shaking. William has spent his whole life hating Templars, because they hurt people that can’t fight back, because he chafes at the idea of one group of people controlling everyone else, because hating Templars is what Assassins do.

“What if they do it again? Daddy, what if they hurt you too?”

But right now, in this second, and probably for the rest of his life, William hates the Templars because they’ve terrified his son beyond all reason.

“I’m going to do everything in my power to make sure that doesn’t happen.”

Desmond doesn’t answer. Just cries. Just sits there in William’s arms and sobs out his broken heart. And William cries too. More quietly, but with the same, genuine grief that Desmond is feeling. Neither of them has anything left in the world but the other, and in some ways this feels like the end. Because what if the Templars  _ do  _ come back? What if William can’t protect them?

In the end, Desmond tires himself out from the sobbing, and falls asleep on William’s lap, face still wet, curled up as small and tight as he can get. William wraps his arms around Desmond then, and spends the night like that, watching the door and keeping fierce watch against absolutely anything else that might threaten his son.

-//-

September 2, 2012

-//-

It’s become Sunday night tradition for William and Desmond to meet up for dinner, usually at William’s place. With both of them busy at work these days, it’s usually the only time during the week they get to see each other.

This Sunday, William isn’t  _ particularly  _ worried when Desmond doesn’t answer his text about what food he’s in the mood for. And he’s not really concerned when Desmond doesn’t show up right on time. But when an hour goes by, and there’s no sign of Desmond, and William can’t get him on the phone, he starts to get  _ extremely  _ worried.

He locks up the house and drives to Desmond’s apartment. Two or three times on the way over, he tries calling again. No luck. Straight to voicemail every time, and the brief recording for Desmond’s voicemail only makes William more anxious. Something’s wrong. He doesn’t know what it is yet, but he has a lot of ideas, and he knows he’s not just being paranoid when he imagines Desmond being ambushed and killed without having any means to fight back.

It’s been nineteen years since they ran from the Farm. Really, it’s a miracle the Templars haven’t tracked them down already.

He parks badly in the street outside Desmond’s apartment, and heads up. Desmond gave him a key ages ago, after he accidentally locked himself out one time for an entire weekend before his landlord came back from a weekend out of town. William uses it now, and he knows right away that all his worst fears are right.

The place is a mess. It’s been torn apart and searched, and the only thing that keeps William from flat out panicking is that there’s no body, and not even a hint of blood.

“Holy  _ shit _ ,” someone says, and William realizes he’s made a mistake—Desmond’s door is still open, and one of the neighbors has just passed by. She stands in the doorway, ogling. Her eyes dart upward and sideways to William, and she says, “Do you want me to call the police?”

“No,” William says, very quickly. Another mistake. Her eyes widen.

“Did you do this?” she asks.

William takes a breath. “No,” he says, trying to project a confidence he absolutely does not feel right now. “It’s my son’s room. He’s just a bit messy, and I came by to help him clean up.” A false smile slides onto his face, and William wonders bitterly how he can manage even that, while his  _ son  _ is missing, kidnapped or hurt or worse.

“You sure?” she asks.

“Yes,” he says. “Thank you.” And he closes the door in her face. Rude, but he has much bigger problems right now. 

The smile drops away like a lead weight, and William turns back to survey the trashed apartment. It’s been a long time since he had to brush off his Assassin skillset, but he’s going to have to now. It’s for Desmond.

So he starts to look through the room, cleaning as best he can as he does. There’s every chance that girl will call the police in a few days when Desmond doesn’t come back, and he doesn’t want them finding anything and stumbling into the middle of something that’s too big for them. The last thing he needs is more blood on his hands. It’s already his fault that Desmond didn’t expect this, that he couldn’t fight back, that he’s been taken.

William tries to disconnect as he goes around Desmond’s room. He has to slip back into an old way of thinking, the way he had been two decades ago when he was still an Assassin. Because Desmond doesn’t  _ have  _ anyone else, does he? If he’s been taken that means they’re holding him somewhere, it means they don’t want to kill him, yet, and William might still be able to save him. 

It’s so hard, disconnecting. This isn’t just any Templar victim. This is Desmond, and William knows every inch of his son’s life. He recognizes the things the Templars have taken and torn apart. The well loved items and the odds and ends abandoned in corners. It isn’t fair to see Desmond’s life torn apart like this, and more than once as he works, William finds himself lingering over some item, remembering, worrying about what comes next. This is painful, and… and it’s only going to get worse. That’s what keeps William going, because it’s only going to get worse and he  _ has  _ to be there.

He still has contacts, or he thinks he does. Old failsafe phone numbers and hidden safe houses that might still be in use. There might be some friends he can still call on, and by the time William is done cleaning Desmond’s apartment, he has a shaky plan in place.

For now, until Desmond is safe, William  _ can’t  _ be a father. He can’t be paralyzed with fear and worry, clouded with too many emotions. Just for a while, he has to be an Assassin. All the skills and habits that have slipped away from him in the last two decades, those are the things he’ll need to rely on now. He has a mission again, an important one, and when it’s all over he can maybe, if he’s lucky, he can find his way back to a normal life, back to… well, not to this. The Templars know where they are now. Or at least they know where Desmond is. Either they don’t know he’s here too, or they don’t care.

Or they’re coming for him.

That thought shakes him out of his fog, and after no more than five seconds of consideration, William moves. Out the door, down the apartment’s back stairs, and out. He tosses his phone in a dumpster on the way past, and makes a beeline for an older looking car on the edge of the lot. If he’s going to make it to anyone that might be able to help, he’s going to need transportation. Just not  _ his  _ transportation, because they might know his car, they might be able to track him.

The car is predictably easy to steal, and William is halfway out of town when he remembers the box hidden at the top of the shelf in the back of his closet at home. It might be worth going back for that. After all, even an Assassin needs his tools.

-//-

They’re still there, in the box, a little dusty and a little stiff. William surveys the blades critically before nodding to himself and—with careful, purposeful movements—strapping the blades to his wrists. He’ll give them the care they need, and he knows they’re not beyond repair. Hopefully he’s not beyond repair either, hopefully his skills aren’t too rusty. 

William lets his arms drop to his sides. His arms feel heavy, he’s forgotten the weight.

He curls his hands into fists, and heads back out. Something wrenches in his gut, leaving home behind. There are a lot of memories here, a lot of good times. 

_ Don’t think like that. Don’t.  _

He’s an Assassin again. And Assassins don’t look backward, don’t get attached, don’t look for permanence. 

God. He never really thought he’d be going back to this.


	3. Chapter 3

May 13, 1993

-//-

“It’s different,” Desmond says, when he sees the new house. It’s big. Not  _ big _ , not like other houses in the neighborhood, but bigger than the tight little houses Desmond is used to seeing at the F—

It’s different.

“It might be good different,” his dad says. 

Desmond half shrugs. “Might be,” he says. “Mom’s not gonna be there.”

“No.” His dad takes him by the hand, and Desmond lets himself be led into the house. It’s empty for now, they don’t have any stuff to put in it yet, but there’s a strong beam of sunlight coming in through the windows, and it makes the room feel full. It’s… maybe it’s not bad. 

“What are we gonna do here?” he asks.

“Well,” his dad says. “I’m going to find a job.”

“Ew.” Desmond wrinkles his nose and then smiles a little when his dad laughs.

“And you’re going to school.”

“With other kids?”

“Yep.”

“Oh.” That doesn’t sound too bad either. Less boring than just sitting in his room all alone. “And no one’s going to come looking for us here?”

“Come with me, Desmond,” his dad says, and they walk to the window together. When he looks outside, though, there’s nothing there. A little yard with an uneven wooden fence, and beyond that just a field of tall prairie grasses. If he turns his head and squints, he can see their neighbor a little ways down the road. Not much else to see.

“I don’t get it,” Desmond says.

“This is the last place in the world where they’re going to come looking for us,” his dad says. “I know… you don’t know what your mother and I do… or did. But there’s this saying we have, maybe you’ve heard it before. We work in the dark to serve the light.”

Desmond nods uncertainly. He’s hard his parents say that before.

“They’ll look in the shadows,” his dad says. “They’ll look in little hiding places like the Farm. They’ll look in big cities, they’ll look anywhere in the world but here. I won’t lie to you. There’s always a  _ chance  _ that something will happen. But we’re in a tiny town in the middle of nowhere, and there are no shadows here.”

And standing there, with the light from the windows pooling around them, Desmond believes him. It’s not like everything’s going to be okay, but Desmond can at least relax. “Can you show me my room?” he asks, and his dad smiles as he nods and leads him up the stairs.

-//-

September 3, 2012

-//-

Desmond’s flat on his back on the floor, fists clenched, breathing hard, and he can’t remember how he got there. The last thing he remembers is going into the animus this morning. Or… no, the last thing he remembers is chasing down flags in Acre, only technically that’s not his memory, it’s Altair’s, and Desmond’s skin crawls with the idea of his mind twisting into the shape of his ancestor’s.

He shifts, slowly—his head is pounding. Desmond’s just managed to get himself resting against the wall when he realizes Lucy is kneeling in front of him, looking worried.

“What happened?” Desmond asks. His voice comes out quiet, and he tells himself it’s just because he’s tired, not because he can’t speak up, not because he’s  _ giving  _ up. But it’s getting harder and harder to keep going. The one thing that helps, honestly, is that he doesn’t have a choice.

“You came out of the animus,” Lucy tells him.

“Well, yea,” Desmond mutters. “I figured that, since I’m not in it anymore.”

She doesn’t laugh. “Do you remember coming out, Desmond?”

He considers lying to her, but honestly there’s no point. “No,” he says. “I don’t.”

Lucy nods like he’s just confirmed something she already knows. “I didn’t think so,” she says. “You didn’t look like you really had a solid grasp on what was going on.”

“Yea.”

“Yea. And then you…” She makes an unhappy gesture, miming a fall. Desmond winces and rubs at the back of his head.

“And that’s normal?” he asks.

Lucy takes a deep breath. “It’s called the bleeding effect,” she says, and something about the words sends a shiver up Desmond’s spine. He doesn’t think he really wants to know what that is, but on the other hand he’s going to sit up all night imagining how bad it could be if she doesn’t just tell him.

“Yea?” he says, a little uncertainly. 

She sighs. “Get comfortable. This is going to take a while.”

So she explains how he’s going to lose his mind. How in a few weeks or a few months he’s not going to know if his name is Desmond or Altair. And then a few weeks after that, he’s going to start painting the walls with his blood, like the last guy.

Desmond’s legs feel steadier, at least. He stands up on them, walks as far away from Lucy as he can get. Then all at once the stupid anger of it overwhelms him—he kicks out at the wall, hard enough to mark the wall, hard enough to make his toe hurt. “ _ Fuck _ ,” he curses, because what he really wants to say is  _ I want to go home _ , but if he says that, Desmond thinks he might just cry. He feels panicked, feels like there’s something tight wrapped around his chest, and he  _ can’t  _ leave, he  _ can’t  _ do anything to protect himself. 

He rubs his hands across his face, whispers fuck again, more quietly, and after a full thirty seconds spent pulling himself together, he turns back to Lucy. “I’m sorry.”

“Don’t be,” she says. “This is… it’s hard to take in. It’s okay to be scared, or angry, or anything else you’re feeling right now.”

“I have… no idea what I’m feeling right now,” Desmond says honestly.

A thick silence settles over the room around them, between them. Then Desmond asks, “Does it really matter? All this? The Assassins and the Templars and… all this? It’s the twenty first century, Lucy, not 1195.”

Her expression twists into a wry grin. “Desmond,” she says. “The people that run this place? All the higher ups in Abstergo, the people that are holding you?”

“Yea?”

“They’re Templars. They’re still around, and there are Assassins around too. This is a war that’s been going on for centuries, and it’s not going to stop any time soon. I’m sorry, I know this sounds crazy. If you have questions… I can try and help?”

Desmond doesn’t know how to process any of this, and right now it probably doesn’t matter. He’s not an Assassin, he’s not a Templar, he’s just the unlucky guy that got stuck in the middle. The one thing that matters is he’s going to lose his mind, and there’s no way out of it, no questions he can ask that will help him make sense of it all.

“Lucy?”

“Yea?”

There is one question he sort of wants the answer to. It won’t really help, but… it might make him feel better. “Is Altair my ancestor on my dad’s side, or my mom’s side?”

She blinks, clearly not expecting the question. Then she says, “He’s in your paternal ancestral line.”

“So my dad,” Desmond says. “Okay.”

He’s right. It does make him feel better.


	4. Chapter 4

**Chapter 4**

 

August 1, 1993

-//-

Because of the timing when they move in, and because William wants to give Desmond the time he needs to pull himself back together, he doesn’t look into school right away. He waits until the next fall, when Desmond can start with everyone else and not be the new kid that comes in at the middle of the year.

It turns out to be a good choice. By the time the new school year rolls around, Desmond is starting to bounce back. He’s smiling again, like he used to, and taking an interest in things. William is surprised and slightly ashamed to see how well Desmond takes to life here. He meets kids on the playground down the block, he makes friends, he tries new things. And yes, he still has nightmares but William is  _ there  _ for him, every night, until every night turns into every other night turns into once a week turns into once in a while. He’s thinking about the Templar attack less, putting it behind him or forgetting, the way only kids can. William is completely okay with that.

Now it’s time for school, and Desmond seems oddly excited about the idea. William never went to school himself, he learned from his parents and other Assassins whenever they had a spare minute. But from everything he understands, Desmond isn’t supposed to be excited about this. Then again, maybe he just wants to spend more time with his friends. That’s good too.

They’re out buying school supplies when Desmond looks at him and asks, “Why don’t you have a job?”

William smiles reflexively. He has some money set aside. The Assassins are good at hiding money, and this particular nest egg comes from William’s grandparents, through a series of trusts William is confident can’t be traced back to him. “We’re okay,” he assures Desmond. “We’re not getting thrown out on the street any time soon.”

“But everyone else’s dad has a job,” Desmond says. “Except Tommy’s dad, ‘cuz he got fired, but he’s gonna get another one. Are you gonna get a job?”

William looks down at Desmond, actually thinking it over. He doesn’t technically need to work, and a large part of him is already rebelling at the idea of a nine to five job, of falling inside the rules he’s skating around for his whole life. It’s not what Assassins do.

“Dad?” Desmond prompts.

But it is what fathers do. And maybe in his case it’s not so much about providing for Desmond as it is about blending in, making them seem normal, but maybe that doesn’t matter. Desmond’s right. It’s odd that he’s the only man in town that doesn’t need to work, and if Desmond’s noticed, other people will too. And they’ll ask questions.

“I’m going to look for a job,” he says. “After you start school.”

“Oh,” Desmond says, nodding like that explains everything. “Okay.” And then he’s back to talking about school, about if his friends from the playground will be in his class, about what his teacher will be like. It’s not until they’re out in the parking lot, unloading what seems like an unnecessarily large amount of gluesticks and notebooks into the car, that Desmond leans over and hugs him.

“I’m glad we ended up here,” he says. “I wish Mom was here too, but… I like it.”

“Yea?” It gives William a little pang of loss to hear that. If the Farm hadn’t been destroyed, Desmond would have been trained as an Assassin instead of sent to school. He’d follow in a lone line of Assassin ancestors, stretching back to even William doesn’t know when. Assassin history has a way of being lost, but he knows that his family has been in the Brotherhood for a very long time. That’s all going to end with Desmond.

“Yea,” Desmond says, grinning up at him.

“Good.” In the face of that, William decides it’s not so bad, leading Desmond down a different path.

-//-

September 3, 2012

-//-

William travels through the night, driving until his hands shake and his eyes burn. Finally, when it comes down to a choice between pulling over and falling asleep at the wheel, he gives in and pulls into the next rest stop he sees. It’s a little past four in the morning. The place is completely deserted, which is less than ideal. William would have liked to steal a replacement car for the one he’s been driving since he left home.

His  _ old  _ home. William knows he’ll never be able to go back there again. He’s left plenty of places behind in his life, but other than the Farm, he’s never missed any of them. And even that had been different, because his regrets there had been focused on all the people left behind. This time, he’d lost a part of himself.

And his son, of course. But William was going to get Desmond back.

The squat brown building doesn’t have much going for it. A set of bathrooms, one men and one women. Two overpriced vending machines, sitting on either side of a large map of the state. An unidentifiable puddle of sticky  _ something  _ on the floor that William carefully avoids. But there’s a pay phone next to one of the vending machines, and when William slides a pair of quarters into the slot and tests it, he hears a dial tone. Good.

There aren’t many people from the old days William still thinks he can get in contact with, but Gavin Banks is one of them. His best friend when he was a kid—a thousand years ago, just about—and one of the best Assassins William’s ever met.

William knows the number off by heart. Gavin’s ultimate safe number, the same phone he’s had for years. As long as it hasn’t been compromised since William left.

He shoves the thought aside and dials. Let’s the phone ring to voicemail. He doesn’t expect Gavin to have the phone on him, but eventually he’ll check his messages. When the automated voice tells him to leave his message at the beep, William takes a deep breath and launches into the speech he’s been mentally rehearsing since he first decided to come to Gain.

“It’s William,” he tells his old friend. “Miles.” When was the last time he’d used his real name? “I know it’s been a long time, but I’m in trouble.” He bit his lip, then corrected himself. “My  _ son  _ is in trouble. I need your help to get him back from the Templars, I’ll do whatever you want me to, but… I need your help. I’ll keep calling, I’ll try and make it every day, and… hopefully you’ll be here one of those days.” 

He hangs up and just stands there for a minute, hand still on the phone. That had been oddly difficult. There’s a… mindset he used to be able to slip into whenever it came to Assassin business. Strict, matter of fact, maybe even a little bit cold. The phone call he just made had been about as far from that as possible, and he can only imagine what Gavin’s going to think about that.

-//-

The next day, he calls again. And the day after that. On day four when he calls, the line on the other end picks up on the first ring.

“William,” Gavin says. His voice is simultaneously familiar and strange. The same voice of the same man he’d grown up with and fought with, but harsher than he remembers. Mentally, William braces for whatever’s going to come next. “Imagine my surprise when I checked my messages and heard from you.”

“Surprise,” William says, lamely. Today, he’s out in the open, at a phone booth on the edge of a deserted-for-the-moment gas station. It’s too out in the open for his tastes, and a combination of that awkwardness and this confrontation is making him twitchy. If this was ten, twenty years ago, he’d never have come here, but it’s getting harder and harder to find pay phones these days. This is the third place he’s tried, and he hadn’t been willing to risk looking anywhere else.

“We all thought you were dead,” Gavin says. “In the attack on the Farm.”

“I ran,” William admits. “I grabbed Desmond and ran. We survived and I never looked back.”

“Clearly,” Gavin says. “What the fuck, William?”

“I know, it wasn’t the most—”

“You could have reached out to us at any time,” Gavin says. “Clearly you still have my phone number, you’ve been calling it every day for the last week.”

“Gavin, please.”

“You turned your back on the Assassins,” Gavin says. “You as good as betrayed us when you left, and every second of every day when you didn’t come back to us. We needed you, William. We  _ mourned  _ you with everyone else, and then as time went on, and the  _ fight  _ went on—William, we needed you. You’re—you used to be one of the best. There were fights we lost that maybe you could have helped us win. And people died in those fights. The Assassins lost influence. And then there was the Purge—”

“The what?” William asks, startled.

“Oh,” Gavin says. “Right, of course. Because you weren’t around for that, either. The Templars sent a sleeper agent into the Brotherhood.”

“Oh  _ no _ ,” William breathes. Purge. Sleeper agent. There’s no way this can possibly end well. “How much damage did he do?”

“Unimaginable,” Gavin says. “He killed the mentor, and the Templars moved on every camp he’d ever seen, which was most of them. We lost our permanent bases. Every Assassin on the world is on the run right now, William. And we have been for twelve years. There’s probably less than a thousand of us left in the world, but it’s impossible to tell for sure because there’s no organization left at all. Just loose cells doing their damnedest to stay alive and maybe get a tiny hit on the Templars at the same time.”

“I had no idea things had gotten so bad,” William said quietly.

“Well, no,” his oldest friend says. His voice is dismissive and scathing. “Because you haven’t been here. Thanks for getting in touch, William, but—”

“Don’t hang up,” William says, cutting across him. “Gavin, please, don’t hang up. I understand you’re mad at me, but I’m not calling because I need help, I’m calling because my son does.”

“William, I don’t have resources, I don’t have anything.”

“He doesn’t even know about this war,” William says. He can hear his words speeding up in desperation. “He’s never been told about the Assassins and the Templars. Gavin, he’s an innocent.”

There’s nothing but crackling silence through the phone, and William leans against the payphone and closes his eyes. “He’s  _ innocent _ ,” he repeats, a little more quietly.

Gavin sighs, and even though William hasn’t seen him for years, he can so perfectly picture what the man’s face must look like now. The expression, anyway, that look of impatience and frustrated anger. The actual face… William can’t imagine how his friend’s face must have aged in the twenty odd years since they last saw each other. 

“William, you have a lot of gall,” he says now. “Asking me for help after you ran.”

“But I’m here anyway,” William points out. “And I’m not going stop doing whatever it takes to get him back. If that means convincing you to help, or going after him myself, I will  _ do  _ it. Desmond… I need him safe.

Again, there’s a pause, and this time William starts to worry about losing the call. He feeds another couple of quarters into the machine, and prompts, “Gavin?”

“Listen,” Gavin says. “I’ll do what I can. I’ll reach out to a few people, try and figure out where they might be holding your boy. But I don’t have that many resources, it’s not like it used to be. Can I count on you to do some of the legwork yourself?”

“Of course.”

“You won’t go running off this time?”

“ _ Gavin _ .”

“Listen, I had to ask. But if you’re serious about this, come to Atlantic City.”

“Atlantic—why?” For a second, he can’t help imagining the Assassins hiding out in a casino out in Jersey, and he almost laughs.

“I’m on a ship out in the Atlantic right now,” Gavin says. “I can meet you there.”

_ That  _ fits much better. “I’ll be there,” he promises.

“Call me when you get there,” Gavin says. “But don’t use this number. I have a new one that’s easier for me to access. You got a pen?”

William doesn’t, but as Gavin rattles off the number, he commits it to memory. Then Gavin hangs up without so much as a goodbye, and William heads back to the car. It’s not much, but at least he has a destination now. He’s no closer to finding Desmond, but this is better than the aimless, cross country drive he’s been taking so far.

It’s a step in the right direction.


	5. Chapter 5

September 22, 1997

-//-

“Hey.”

Desmond’s a fourth grader, and short for his age, and skinny, and he’s not  _ really  _ surprised when the sixth grader he’s trying to catch up with doesn’t pay any attention. But that doesn’t mean he stops, just that he speeds up and shouts.

“Hey, I’m talking to you!”

The older boy stops and turns around, half smiling and half laughing like he can’t believe Desmond is trying to get his attention. “Yea,” he says. “What?”

Like most of the kids at their school, they walk home after class. Desmond isn’t supposed to go by himself, his dad is really strict about walking him home every single day. But this is important. Every day since school started, more than two months ago, this kid has been bothering the people in Desmond’s class. Not him so much. Mostly the girls, but Desmond’s tired of watching it happen. And he hit one of them this morning, and this is the only chance Desmond has to actually do something about that without a teacher seeing them and interrupting.

“You hit a girl today,” Desmond says, “You can’t hit people, and especially not when they’re younger, and not when they’re six inches shorter than you.” He frowns. “You just don’t. It’s not right.”

“Yea well, go away,” the kid says, and Desmond feels his hands starting to curl into fists. This is none of his business, it’s really none of his business, but… she’d cried all morning, rubbing her eyes and keeping her face down so their teacher won’t see her brand new bruise behind her hair. Desmond isn’t really okay with that. “She was buggin’ me.”

“You can’t do that again,” Desmond insists. He’s not exactly sure what he’s looking for here, because an apology to him isn’t going to mean much and there’s no explanation that’s good enough. Maybe he just wants to make sure that this doesn’t happen a second time.

“Now  _ you’re  _ buggin’ me,” the kid says. “Go away.”

“I don’t care if I’m bugging you,” Desmond says, stepping forward.   “You—”

The kid hits him, and it’s like the sky’s just falling down on top of him. Desmond grunts in pain, and kicks back at the kid, and that just starts it all off. The fight is short and painful and pretty one sided. Desmond doesn’t really have a chance against the older boy, and it shows. When the kid finally gets off him and throws a derisive  _ ha _ ! down at Desmond, it’s definitely over.

It takes him a couple of minutes to pick himself up off the sidewalk and limp back to the school parking lot, where his dad is waiting for him. At first, he looks stern when Desmond gets close to him, and then he sees the fresh bruises and his expression shifts to concern. “Desmond,” he says. “What happened, are you okay?”

“I’m fine, Dad—”

“I should have known something happened when you didn’t come straight out here.” Normally, that statement would have been the start of a lecture, about how he knows he’s supposed to come straight here after school, and not walk home alone, but—this time, there’s not even a hint of that. “Desmond. What happened?”

“I got in a fight,” Desmond mumbles.

“A fight? Who with?”

“This older kid. He hit a girl in my class this morning and I told him it wasn’t okay, and then he hit me.”

“And did you hit him back?”

Desmond hesitates. “Yes,” he admits at last.

His dad doesn’t yell about that either. Instead, he says, “Good. Desmond, there are good reasons for violence, and bad reasons for violence, but sticking up for someone that’s been hurt is a good reason. I’m not saying that I want you to put yourself in danger, or go looking for a fight, but sometimes you  _ have  _ to. And I’m proud of you for sticking up for your classmate.”

Desmond gives him a watery smile, and his dad puts an arm around his shoulder. “Now,” he said. “We’re going to go home, and I’m going to take a look at your bruises, and then you’re going to tell me all about this boy you got in a fight with, and I’m going to have a talk with the school.”

“Okay,” Desmond agrees. He feels better now that he has his dad on his side. That pretty much means everything’s going to be okay.

-//-

September 8, 2012

-//-

“Why me?” Desmond asks Lucy, after one particularly long animus session. The bleeding effect isn’t bad right now, despite the session’s length. Vidic has little to offer in facts about the bleeding effect, and Lucy has very little more. As far as Desmond can tell, it’s not like she’s trying to hold things back, it’s just that the bleeding effect is very badly understood. But he’s starting to figure things out, just a little.

He’s realizing, for example, that it doesn’t matter how long he’s in the animus. What matters more is what the memories look like. How Altair feels. If Desmond spends three hours riding the path from Masyaf to Jerusalem, searching for synchronization points and fighting guards, it’s not going to trigger the bleeding effect. Those days are second nature to Altair, he tunes them out and focuses on what’s coming next. But if he has an assassination to do, if he has to spend time with his brothers, Altair’s emotions are far more in the forefront of his mind. He feels things more, much as he tries to hide it, and  _ that’s  _ what leads to bleeding. Maybe. Or maybe not. Maybe he’s just full of crap and looking for nonexistent logic in the way he’s losing his mind.

“What do you mean, why you?” Lucy asks.

“Why’d you pick me of all people to stick in the animus?”

Lucy looks up at him, expression sharp. It’s not a look he sees on her often, but every once in a while it’s like she forgets she’s supposed to be cowed by Vidic, and she lets him have a glimpse of what she could have been like, in another life, if she wasn’t just as trapped here as he is. “I didn’t pick you,” she says now. “If it was up to me, no one would be forced into the animus.”

“No,” Desmond says. “I didn’t mean that it was you, but…  _ somebody  _ picked me, and I guess I just want to know why. Like… you could have tracked down some other descendant, right? He lived a thousand years ago, I’m sure there’s gotta be someone else around today that has him as an ancestor.”

Lucy shrugs. “Probably.”

“Or you could have picked someone else’s descendant. Malik’s, right? Or al Mualim, or someone else.”

“I mean, maybe,” Lucy says. “But you’re the one with the Assassin bloodline. I guess Vidic thought you’d be the best choice.”

“What?” Desmond asks. “You mean Altair, right? With the bloodline?”

“Him, yea,” Lucy says. “But everyone else, too.”

“Everyone…?”

“There are some families,” Lucy says. “That have been Templars forever. And some families that have been Assassins forever. Like yours, Desmond. From Altair or earlier, all the way down to now.”

“But that’s not right,” Desmond says. Sure, he can accept that a thousand years ago he had an ancestor halfway around the world that killed people for a creed. He just has a hard time wrapping his head around the idea that his family, now, in the present day, are Assassins. “Lucy,” he says. “I swear, I’m normal. I’ve never been part of all this, my parents have never been part of all this… this isn’t something that really happens in the twenty first century.”

She just looks at him, considering, for a long time. Then she says, “Let me show you something.”

Desmond nods, because it sounds like he’s about to be offered more information, and he needs as much of that as he can get. Lucy moves away from the animus and over to the computer back by the desk, and after a second Desmond follows.

“I have access to a lot of stuff related to your file,” Lucy says, and Desmond leans forward curiously as she starts scrolling through. He sees stuff from the animus, then stuff from his apartment. What looks like plans for his kidnapping.

“You’re allowed to show me all this?” he asks.

Lucy shrugs. “It doesn’t seem like something that matters much now,” she points out, and Desmond has to admit she’s right. He’s already their captive. What are they going to do, snatch him again? Lucy scrolls farther, until she stops at what looks like a scan of an older file. The first page is empty apart from a large, blocky heading, THE FARM, and then under that, RECONNAISSANCE AND INCURSION PLANS. AUGUST 1993.

Desmond frowns. August of ‘93. He’d been six years old, and that had  been right around when his mom died, and he moved away with his dad. The details have always been… Desmond had been too young to really understand what happened, and his dad hates talking about it. All Desmond really really knows is that it had been a bad time.

Maybe he’s about to know more.

Lucy shifts aside to let him scroll through at his own pace, so he does. There’s a lot there that he doesn’t recognize. Names and faces that mean nothing to him, most with a full dossier underneath. They’re Assassins, Desmond realizes after reading through a few. These are details of people they’ve killed and missions they’ve been part of. Desmond doesn’t understand most of the details being referenced, but his eyes catch on the one thing that every person seems to have in common.

Under each picture, even before the dossier, is a date of birth, and a date of death. And every single date of death is April 12, 1993. It’s sobering, and Desmond slows down, scrolling more carefully. Ten people. A dozen. Two dozen. More. Desmond scrolls past siblings, spouses, families. The information seems to be loosely organized by families, with plenty of individuals scattered in among them.

And then Desmond gets to page 22, and stops. That’s his dad at the top of the page, younger but instantly recognizable. He’s got a dossier too, but Desmond can’t quite make himself believe what he’s reading there. These are supposed to be Assassin missions, aren’t they? And people he’s killed. But that can’t be right. No way, that’s his dad. He’s never hurt anyone.

Desmond’s eyes flicker down the page. He recognizes the face of the woman underneath his dad’s picture, which surprises him. He… hasn’t seen his mom in almost twenty years. Hasn’t even seen a picture of her. But that’s her, with her own list of things she’s done and people she’s killed.

And then under that is him. Six years old, with the wrong name. Desmond Miles, it says. Born March 13, 1987. Died April 12, 1993. There’s nothing else listed there.

Desmond drags his eyes back up to Lucy, She’s looking sympathetic, which doesn’t help him feel too much better. “Twenty years ago,” she says quietly. “A strike team of Templar agents went after an Assassin base in South Dakota, called the Farm. They’d been surveying it for over a year before they went in, and the mission was an absolute success. No survivors. At least—that’s what everyone assumed until a few months ago, when a man walked into an Abstergo run clinic in Illinois, and his bloodwork matched…” She leaned over, and tapped the picture of the younger Desmond on the screen.

“But that means—Lucy, that can’t be right.”

“It is, I promise. Vidic and his people aren’t the nicest people, but they keep good records.”

“But that would mean my dad’s an Assassin.”

“A very good one,” Lucy agrees, and Desmond shakes his head. No. No way. For twenty years, it’s been just him and his dad. Desmond had learned to trust his dad with absolutely everything, and he’d assumed… he’d never had a reason not to trust…

His dad can’t be a killer. It’s just not true. It’s not. Can’t be. No.

But on the other hand… there had been that time in high school, the box with the bracers Desmond hadn’t been able to recognize back then. The hidden blades. But  _ still—no _ . It’s just not possible.

“What do you mean,” Desmond says, voice almost hoarse. He realizes it’s because he’s forgotten to breathe, and forces a breath in through his nose. “What do you mean, a good one. My dad really killed people?” he asks. “I mean, he works at a school. A university.  Helps out with  _ admissions _ , he can’t be this person you think he is. He—”

“Desmond.” Lucy’s voice isn’t loud, it’s just… steady. She reaches over him to the computer, navigates to another folder, and clicks something open. It’s an old security footage. It’s his d… It’s him. The video isn’t fantastic. It’s old. It’s a bad angle. But it’s still clear enough to see the way his father fights. And how many he kills.

“I’m sorry,” Lucy says, when the video ends. “I didn’t mean to… go too far.”

“I’m fine.”

“You look like you’re in shock.”

Desmond swallows, hard. “He’s never going to get to explain,” he says quietly. “Eventually I’m going to go crazy, or Vidic’s going to kill me. And I’ll never know why he lied to me for twenty years.”

“ _ Desmond… _ ”

He ignores her, turning to walk away instead. Right now, unlikely as it might seem, he almost wants to just go back into the animus. Just to get out of his own head, just to stop  _ thinking  _ for a little while.

His dad’s an Assassin, and Desmond has no idea what to do with that.

-//-

Desmond doesn’t go into the animus the next day. He wakes up and his stomach is churning, he can’t focus, and even Vidic takes one look at him and agrees he shouldn’t go in. Desmond would have been relieved, if he wasn’t so distracted. As it is, he spends a good chunk of the day curled up on his thin excuse for a bed, trying to work his way through yesterday’s revelations.

He can live with the Assassins and the Templars still existing. He can live with this stupid animus, he can… sort of accept that he’s a prisoner here and he’s never getting out of this. Funny, how quickly you can come to terms with something awful when it’s made so abundantly clear that there’s no other choice.

But his dad lied to him. He hid things— _ important _ things—from Desmond. For years. For his whole life. And Desmond doesn’t know what to think about that right now. It changes how he looks at the man that raised him, and he hates that.

Hours later, when Desmond feels almost steady again, Lucy comes to him. She’s stained red with blood, and Desmond tenses instinctively. This is probably a bad sign. “What’s wrong?” Desmond asks, sliding off the bed. His legs are steadier—good.

“No time,” Lucy says. “Desmond, come on.”

“Where are we going?”

“We’re running,” she says, and Desmond latches singlemindedly onto that thought. Running.  _ Escaping _ . He opens his mouth to ask her why, but when he looks over at her, she’s holding out her hand, one finger bent down and out of sight. Desmond has an incredibly powerful flash of memory—not his, of course—and he recognizes in that movement the sign of the Assassins.

“You’re one of them,” he says, but Lucy hisses “ _ Shh _ !” and doesn’t let him say anything until they’re—fuck, they’re outside. Actually outside. Or… well, they’re in a parking garage, but it’s something.

Out there, Lucy pauses just long enough to corner him behind the cover of the closest car. “Yea,” she says. “I’m an Assassin, Desmond. I’ve been undercover with the Templars for a long time, but this is worth breaking my cover over.  _ You’re  _ worth it.”

“Me? Why?”

Her gaze is intense, almost hypnotic. Desmond can’t help staring. “Because you have the potential to be a great Assassin, Desmond. I’ve watched you for days. You’re a good person, and you don’t deserve what Vidic was doing to you.”

“You… want me to be an Assassin,” Desmond echoes. Like his dad. Apparently.

She watches him. “Do you want to be an Assassin, Desmond?”

This feels like one of those moments. One of those edge of the knife moments, when life could go either way. Desmond knows they’re running for their lives. He knows they need to get out of here before Abstergo catches up to them. But he forces himself to pause, and really think about everything he’s seen in the animus. And everything….

His dad is a good man. That still has to count for something.

“Yea,” Desmond says. “Yea, Lucy, okay.”

“You’ll do it?”

“I’ll do it.”


	6. Chapter 6

December 3, 1998

-//-

It’s 5:00 in the first week of December, which means that when William goes upstairs to tell Desmond that dinner’s ready, he’s not entirely surprised to find the room dark. What he is surprised to see is Desmond sprawled out flat on his back, staring moodily at the ceiling and absentmindedly kicking the foot of his bed. He doesn’t have a bad tempered son, and seeing Desmond moping up here is a bad sign. 

“Can I quit school?” Desmond asks, as soon as William walks in. He sounds like he’s been waiting to deliver that particular line.

“No,” William says. He walks over to the bed, and picks up Desmond’s folder and notebook. “Math,” he says, voice carefully pitched to keep Desmond from picking up on his opinion. 

“It’s not fair,” Desmond says. “Everybody else gets it already.”

“And you don’t?”

There’s a pretty long pause before Desmond mutters, “ _ No _ .”

William sighs, puts the folder and notebook down on Desmond’s desk, and gently shifts Desmond to one side of the bed so he can sit down next to him.

“It’s stupid,” Desmond says.

“It’s just hard,” William says. “That doesn’t mean it’s stupid and it doesn’t mean you won’t figure it out.”

“Then maybe  _ I’m  _ stupid,” Desmond insists.

“No,” William says, letting a little bit of an edge creep into his voice. “Desmond, I know math can be hard, but I’m not going to put up with that kind of talk.”

“Dad, I don’t want any more math! Didn’t I learn enough already?” Desmond rubs at his eyes, and it could be tiredness, but William has a sneaking suspicion that he’s trying not to cry. He reaches over, and pulls Desmond up so he’s leaning against him. It’s harder than it used to be. His son is getting bigger.

“Come here,” he says quietly.

“Dad…”

Even if Desmond is getting bigger, he’s still small enough for William to hold. “I don’t care if you never get this, although I think you will. I think you’re smarter than you give yourself credit for.”

“You have to say that,” Desmond mumbles. “You’re my dad, it’s your job to say stuff like that.”

“Well, it’s an easy job,” William says. “And even if you were just somebody else’s kid, I’d still know that you’re smart, and you can learn this.”

A long pause. Desmond seems to be thinking it over, which is a good sign. “You said you don’t care if I don’t get it?”

“I don’t,” William says. “As long as you don’t stop trying. Can you do that, Desmond? Keep trying?”

“Yea,” Desmond says. He squirms a little, clearly unhappy with his own answer. “But doesn’t… figuring it out mean something too? Isn’t that more important than just  _ trying _ ?”

“No,” William says. “Because if you try, either you  _ will  _ get it, and that’s great, or you won’t get it—but I’ll never be able to be disappointed in you, because you did your best. Okay?” He has no idea what Desmond’s math homework is, and he doesn’t much care. They’ll get through this. They always get through whatever problem Desmond brings to him. “Desmond, okay?”

“Okay,” Desmond says, voice tiny.

“Good.” William gives him a last, brief hug, and stands up. “So come down, have some dinner, and then we’ll try and get your math figured out.”

Desmond slides off the bed after him, following close behind William as he heads down to the kitchen. “Thank you for helping me,” he says, when they’re all the way back downstairs.

And William looks over the table at him, and promises, “Always.”

-//-

September 9, 2012

-//-

“So.”

“Been a long time.” William tries to smile, but Gavin’s expression is set in stone. “Gavin, I—”“I’m surprised you even showed up,” Gavin says, crossing his arms. He’s disorienting how steady that man is on the deck of the ship, but clearly he’s had some time to get used to it. William, on the other hand, is swaying. He’s never liked ships, and it’s been a long time since he had to stand on the deck of one for any real time. If it wasn’t abundantly obvious that Gavin really was living and working out of here, William would have wondered if he’d picked this meeting place just to throw him, literally, off balance.

“Of course I showed up,” he says, but he knows it’s a weak argument. Now that the first reaction is out of the way and things have had time to settle, he can at least understand Gavin’s point of view. He had run, and maybe that had been forgivable because he had a young son and their home was under attack. But then he’d stayed away, he’d hidden himself and Desmond, he’d cut himself off from the Assassins and never even mentioned the Brotherhood to Desmond.

If the thought of apologizing didn’t have him so uncomfortable, he might have been thinking of doing that right now.

“Right,” Gavin says. He looks like he’s going to say something else, but stops and shakes his head. Instead, he turns and heads for the stairs down into the ship, gesturing for William to follow. “The good news is, I think I know where your son is.”

William follows him, waiting for the other shoe to drop. He doesn’t feel even a second’s worth of relief from Gavin’s so called good news, because if that’s the good news, he knows there must be bad news coming.

“Bad news,” Gavin continues, as they turn into a tight hallway and then a small room that looks like Gavin’s personal space. “Is that I think they have him in an animus.”

William frowns. “When I left,” he says. “Animi were theoretical. Don’t tell me the Templars have figured out how to make one work.”

“Well, yes and no,” Gavin says. “Yes, they work, but no, not for very long.”

“Why not?”

“Because the subject goes insane,” Gavin says, and the bottom drops out of William’s stomach. There it is. The bad news.

“What does that mean, exactly?” he asks. His voice is much calmer than he’d have expected, but at least Gavin looks like he approves. He nods slightly to himself as he starts to explain.

“It’s called the bleeding effect,” he says. “Over time, subjects start to confuse themselves with their ancestors. Visual and auditory hallucinations, confusion, loss of identity…” He trails off, but William doesn’t push him to continue. He doesn’t want to hear what else might be happening to Desmond. That sounds almost as bad as dying.

“Thank you,” he says, after a pause.

For just a second, Gavin’s stony expression slips and he actually looks concerned. “William,” he says. “You know I don’t agree with you running off for twenty years, but… listen, I’ll do what I can to help you get your son out of that animus. We sent an agent into Abstergo undercover a while ago. Clay Kaczmarek.”

“What happened to him?”

“He completely lost his mind, cut open his wrists with a pen tip, and used his blood to draw symbols all over the walls.”

William can’t stop a strong, involuntary shudder from wracking his body. Thats not going to happen to Desmond. It can’t. “Do we know where they’re holding Desmond?”

“Not yet,” Gavin says. “I’m working on it.”

He’s working on it. Great. William wants to urge him to work faster, but doesn’t say anything other than, “Thank you.”

“There’s an open bunk on the other end of the hall,” Gavin says, expression morphing back into that stony mask again. “I’ll let you know when I need you, and I’ll tell you as soon as we hear anything back about where Desmond is.”

“Thank you,” William says again. He stands there awkwardly for another beat or two, then backs out of the room and heads down the hall to find his bunk.


	7. Chapter 7

**** August 18, 1999

-//-

Desmond knows his dad didn’t go to regular school when he was a kid, so it’s not usually all that useful to ask for help with his homework. There are some things his dad is really good at, like geography and history and math, and some things he’s  _ really  _ bad at, like spelling and science and social studies. But this time, Desmond has a homework assignment that he really, really needs his dad to help him with.

It’s the first day of school, and that means his dad took the day off work to make sure he gets there and back okay. In third grade, Desmond accidentally got on the wrong bus and didn’t make it home for an hour and a half. His dad freaked out about it and now he always drives Desmond on the first day of school, even though he’s in sixth grade now and he’s not going to do that again. Sometimes his dad is stubborn, though. And he worries. He always wants to make sure Desmond is okay, and maybe that’s not such a bad thing.

He sits on the curb with his backpack on his lap, waiting until his dad pulls up in the beat up old truck they’ve had forever. Desmond hops into the front seat—he’s  _ finally  _ tall enough to sit up front and he loves it—and waits for his dad to start asking questions.

“How was school?”

“Good.”

“Do you like your new teacher?”

“He’s okay.”

“Got any friends in your class?”

“Tommy and Milo and Carrie.”

“Carrie, huh? That’s a new one.”

“Dad…”

“She’s a girl?”

Desmond hides his face behind his backpack and groans, which makes his dad laugh. “She’s just a friend! And she’s  _ really  _ good at dodgeball, like better than David even.”

“Well, that’s good to hear. I always like hearing you’re making new friends.”

Desmond nods, and then after a minute he says, “Hey Dad?”

“Yea?”

“We got a big project today, and I need your help with it. It’s… a family tree. We’re supposed to go back to our great grandparents and write down stories about them and stuff. But I mean… we never really talk about family. And I don’t know anything about Mom’s family and… Is that okay?”

He doesn’t expect his dad to answer, but then he does. He says, “Well, I can’t tell you much about your mom’s side of the family. I met her mother once, but I never met her father. I don’t know her grandparents.”

“What about your side?”

Desmond glances over at his dad. The thing is, he’s never met his grandparents. He… he  _ barely  _ remembers his mom, he doesn’t know if he has aunts or uncles or cousins. And he loves his dad, he  _ adores  _ him, but sometimes he wonders about what the rest of his family is like.

“I think I can find a few stories to tell you,” his dad says. “It’s all a little… my family’s a little different. And I can’t tell you everything. But I’ll tell you enough for your project, and maybe a couple other stories, okay?”

“Okay.” It’s more than he’d expected, really.

“And Desmond?”

“Yea?”

“I know we don’t talk about family much. But don’t ever doubt that you come from good people. Strong people, who cared about making the world a better place for you and your friends and everyone else.”

“Okay,” Desmond says again. He’s smiling this time. “Can I put that in my project, do you think?”

“I think you should absolutely put that in your project,” his dad says. “And be proud of that.”

-//-

September 12, 2012

-//-

_ God _ , but sometimes it drives Desmond crazy that he ever wanted to know more about his family. There was a time in his life when he genuinely thought he would never have more than his dad’s old stories, when he felt disconnected from the whole of human history because as far as he was concerned, he had no past. No mother, no grandparents, no idea where his ancestors had come from or how long they had been there.

Now he knows his ancestors intimately. He knows every passion Altair pretends not to have, the love he feels for Maria, the fear of the Templars that threaten his home and his family, the guilt over killing his own mentor. And Ezio’s family—Desmond can name every single member of his family, he  _ feels  _ their loss, he… he misses them. Not the same way he misses his dad or his friends back home, but he does. He misses these distant relatives that died centuries before his grandparents were born.

The bleeding effect is what drives him crazy these days, literally and actually crazy. Sometimes, especially when he first gets out of the animus, Desmond doesn’t even feel like Desmond. Today… today is one of those days.

The steady beeping of the animus is the first thing he hears as he struggles sluggishly for consciousness like a swimmer reaching for the surface. He recognizes it, not  _ consciously  _ at first, but somewhere deep in his core. Even before he’s aware enough to realize what that beeping is, the sound of it makes him shake, it sends a chord of disgust and fear shuddering all the way through him.

“Desmond,” someone says, and he feels a hand on his bicep, gently prodding him up, “Come on, Desmond. You need to get up and walk around for a little while. Get out of Ezio’s head.”

Reluctantly, he cracks an eye open, but winces at the light in front of him. His vision swims, and all he can do is take a guess at the woman prodding him gently. “Claudia…?”

She smiles at him. Awkward, a little embarrassed. For him, not for her. “Rebecca,” she corrects, in the voice of someone that’s done this before.

“Becca,” Desmond croaks. His voice hasn’t quite come back yet, he’s been lying still and silent for too long. “Sorry, I’m sorry…”

The embarrassment morphs into pity. “It’s okay,” she says, and Desmond yields to her steady pressure on his elbow, standing up at last. “You feeling okay?” Rebecca asks.

“Just not quite myself yet,” Desmond says, which is absolutely true and also a horrifying understatement. He doesn’t feel connected to his own life right now. There are things…  _ important  _ things that don’t matter yet. His mind keeps trying to slip back into Ezio, into his way of looking at the world, and it feels like shattering himself into pieces just to focus back in on being Desmond.

He goes downstairs as soon as he can walk in a straight line again. She… (name,  _ name _ , what’s her…  _ Lucy _ ). Lucy has set up an obstacle course in the first floor of the warehouse, and Desmond plans to run it until he feels like himself again. Sometimes that helps, sort of… closeting the bleeding effect into one particular aspect of himself. If he’s using Ezio’s skills to climb and run and jump, usually it’s Desmond’s mind that gets to come up to the forefront. He’d tried other things the first couple days. Flipping through TV channels and whatever, but the problem is they’re in Italy, and just hearing the language right after coming out of the animus can trigger the bleeding effect, makes it even worse.

So instead he goes around and around, again and again, until finally he remembers who he is and what he’s fighting for. He’s Desmond. Just Desmond, no last name please because he hasn’t been Miles since he was six years old, and apparently everything else has been a lie. He’s twenty five years old, he’s a normal nobody forced into something bigger than himself, he’s an  _ Assassin _ .

The more times this happens, the more that  _ Assassin  _ point becomes important. Desmond and Ezio agree on that, at least. As different as they are, they still have that in common.

“Desmond!” Shaun calls, and Desmond’s disturbingly proud that he’s remembered the man’s name on the first try.

(Or did he? Does he just think he knows who’s in the room with him, but Shaun’s really someone else?)

“Shaun?” he calls back, tentatively, just to check. He perches on a thin ledge near the roof, just inches from a fall and then a splat.

“Yea,” Shaun calls back. “You ready to come back? Becca says the animus is ready, and Lucy figures you’ve had enough time to get your head on straight.”

Desmond seriously considers staying up there. Yea, he’s had enough time to come back into himself, but if he goes back into the animus he’s just going to lose it again. But there’s a lot riding on this. He knows by now that they’re in a race with the Templars to get to the pieces of Eden, and that’s something worth fighting for, worth sacrificing for.

“Yea,” Desmond says. “Hang on, I’ll be down in a second.”

“Try and hurry it up a little, yea?” Shaun calls, and heads back upstairs as Desmond comes clambering down. He does try to hurry, but… at the last second, just feet away from the animus, he stops. Can’t help it, just… can’t make himself get any closer.

“Desmond?” Lucy says quietly. She’s at his side, and he glances over at her.

“Sorry,” he mutters. “It’s just hard to get back in there.”

“I know,” Lucy says. “But… please? We need you to do this, Desmond.”

And because it’s her asking, because she’s been there for him every step of the way, Desmond nods and tries to smile as he sits back down in the animus to become Ezio again.


	8. Chapter 8

**** February 8, 2001

-//-

“Desmond!”

Half past five, and William is already tired when he walks in the door.  He doesn’t mind his job, really he doesn’t (and yes, that revelation had surprised him too), but what he  _ doesn’t  _ like is working full time. He’s only started taking extra hours when Desmond started high school last month, and with the half hour commute, William often doesn’t make it home until after five. Desmond’s a good kid, and William trusts him to be home alone for a few hours a day, but he misses the time they used to spend together. Then again, with Desmond hitting his teenage years and getting into after school things and spending more time with his friends, maybe they wouldn’t be seeing each other that much anyway.

“Desmond, you home?”

He gets a muffled answer from somewhere upstairs, and William squints suspiciously upward. “Can you come down here?”

There’s a pause of about thirty seconds, then the sound of Desmond thundering down the stairs. William has moved into the kitchen by this point, and he’s rooting through the fridge to see if any of the weekend’s leftovers still look edible. “Are you okay with the chicken from Sunday?” he asks. “It’s still the right color.”

“It’s smells funny,” Desmond says. “Hey Dad, what are these?”

William turns his head for a second to see what Desmond’s looking at, then does a double take when he sees the old shoebox Desmond’s holding onto. It’s dusty and faded, but William recognizes it in an instant. When he ran from the attack on the Farm seven years ago, he carried two things with him of any importance. Desmond, and the hidden blades he’d worn every day of his life up until then. When they came here, William had put the blades aside. He wasn’t fighting anymore, and while he couldn’t quite manage to get rid of them completely, he had abandoned them. Put them in a shoebox and shoved it under his bed, and then forgotten about them for almost a decade.

“Desmond,” William says, standing up straight and looking him right in the eyes. “What are you doing with those?”

“I…” He looked confused. “I was looking for the toolbox. The bathroom sink’s leaking and I thought I’d try and get it fixed be fore you came home. But when I looked under your bed—”

“I don’t keep the toolbox under my bed.”

“I thought you did.” Desmond’s expression is pure confusion. “What are these, Dad? Why did you hide them?”

William steps forward, and takes the box from Desmond. In another lifetime, when he’d woken up every morning and strapped them to his arms, they’d seemed to weigh nothing at all. Now they drag him down, and William wonders when they got so heavy. “Don’t ask about these again,” he says, and for just a second it looks like Desmond’s going to argue. Then he shakes his head and steps back. There’s an awkward silence between them, a tiny rift that has never been there before. But Desmond was straying dangerously close to the Assassins. William doesn’t want him finding out about the Brotherhood. He’s not… it’s not right for him. Desmond is a perfectly normal, happy fourteen year old. He runs track at school, stutters around girls, stays up cramming the night before every Spanish test. He’s not an Assassin. William’s going to spare him from becoming one.

After a minute, Desmond says, “Maybe we can order Chinese?”

“What?”

He looks awkward. William feels the same way. “We could order Chinese,” he says again. “Instead of having the leftovers.”

“Oh.” William takes a breath. “Right. Yea, go ahead and order the usual.”

“Okay. Dad?”

He’d already been turning for the stairs, thinking where he can hide the hidden blades that Desmond won’t look for them. But now he turns back. “Yes, Desmond?”

“We’re okay, right?”

“Of course we’re okay?”

“So… does that mean I can get the extra order of egg rolls?”

William smiles a little, and after a second, Desmond does too. The moment passes. The tense atmosphere eases. And William hides his hidden blades again, this time tucking them on a high shelf in the back of his closet. By the time he goes back downstairs, Desmond is spreading out his biology assignment on the kitchen table, and complaining loudly that he’ll never need to know anything about DNA in the real world.

-//-

September 16, 2012

-//-

Italy. According to Gavin’s sources, Desmond’s somewhere in Italy. And he’s not even held by the Templars anymore, he’s somewhere with a group of Assassins. It doesn’t make William feel entirely secure, but Desmond on the run with a group of Assassins does make him feel a lot better than the idea of Desmond trapped somewhere in Abstergo’s massive corporate maze. It’s a step in the right direction, and it’s going to be so much easier for William to meet up with Desmond again. Gavin’s even given him the contact information for the woman that’s apparently in charge of the cell holding Desmond.

He waits until he’s on solid ground and well away from Gavin’s ship and her small crew, just in case something goes wrong. Then he heads to the nearest convenience store, and buys a burner phone. No one looks at him twice as he moves through the city, and even though he’s never been here before, William finds himself moving through the crowds like a local. That’s a skill, of course, and it has nothing to do with whether or not he’s ever been in this city before. He hasn’t, incidentally, Italy is all new to him. But blending into a crowd, hiding in plain sight, is something that comes with the territory for an Assassin. William used to be very good at that.

He stops in a public park—crowded this time of day, but with enough space to move and keep his eyes on anyone that comes close. William pulls out his new phone, and dials the number Gavin had given him for the contact. It rings, and keeps going for a solid thirty seconds, then goes to voice mail. William leaves a message—he’d been hoping she’d just pick up, but she’s either busy or suspicious, and William doesn’t really know why he’d expected anything else. He drops a few code words, the same kinds of things Assassins have been saying to each other for years. Then he gets up, walks around, gives her a chance to actually listen to the message.

Then he calls again. This time, she picks up on the first ring. “Lucy Stillman,” she says, voice businesslike.

“I—Miss Stillman.” He swallows back the awkwardness. Is he supposed to be on first name terms with her? The Assassins are a brotherhood, it’s one of the things he’d always loved about them. But he’s been out of that family for a long time now, and sliding back into it is hard.

“Lucy,” she says, ending William’s mental gymnastics, trying to figure out what to call her. “You said in your message that you’re Desmond’s dad.”

“I am,” William says, and then he doesn’t know what else to say. All he can think of is blurting out _ where are you, where is  _ he _ , just tell me where to go and I’ll be there _ .

“Desmond talks a lot about you,” Lucy says. “He…”

“How is he?”

There’s the sound of movement, and then the background noise on Lucy’s end of the call drops away. She must have been moving somewhere quieter. “You’ve been told about the animus?” she asks.

“Yes,” William says, holding his phone more tightly.

“And the bleeding effect?” she presses.

“Yes,” he repeats.

“Desmond’s… having a hard time.”

There’s so much more and so much less information in that sentence than William wants to know. “Where are you?” he asks at last. “Where is Desmond?”

There’s a hesitation on her end that William really doesn’t like. It’s hard to tell over the phone, but it almost sounds like she’s considering whether or not to tell him. And if she doesn’t—if for some reason she won’t—

“Paris,” Lucy says. “We’re heading to Paris.”

“Paris?” William repeats, startled. “I heard you were in Italy.”

“We were,” Lucy says. “But we’re on the move.”

“Heading to Paris.”

“Paris, right,” she says, her words overlapping with his. “Listen, we, uh—split up for the trip but I’ll call you on the way there.”

“I’ll get moving too,” William says. “Meet you there.”

“Sounds perfect,” she says, and gives him an address to meet them at before she hangs up. William nods sharply, and heads out of the park. He snaps his phone in half on the way past a garbage can, and tosses the pieces in. Just in case. Then he goes looking for transportation to Paris.


	9. Chapter 9

March 9, 2002

-//-

Desmond has never been all that good at sports. They just seem kind of pointless to him, they don’t hold his interest that well. Maybe it’s too many bad experiences in gym class (he  _ hated  _ his elementary school gym teacher—she smelled like musty socks and talked about  _ winning  _ all the time). Maybe it’s because his dad never really cared much about sports either, so Desmond was never exposed to it growing up. Maybe he’s just weird, but whatever the reason, sports are just not his cup of tea.

At least, not until he got to high school, and more or less accidentally joined the cross country team.

That’s a sport he likes. Just running. Miles and miles, just him and his feet and the trail. He’s not the fastest, he’s not the best, but Desmond is okay with that. Running is just something he enjoys, and he’s happy to have found it.

Even… well, even when he has to run in meets. The competition makes him nervous, but as long as he focuses on  _ his  _ running, and  _ his  _ technique, and not on his competitors. Of course, he usually couldn’t get into that frame of mind until he was actually running. Until that happens, Desmond is  _ always  _ a wreck.

Like right now. Bouncing around the front seat of his dad’s car, fidding with the ac, the radio, anything to keep his attention. His dad keeps glancing over at him, grinning, and finally Desmond asks, “ _ What _ ?”

“Nothing,” his dad says, in a tone that’s far too serious to be real. He’s teasing Desmond. “I just like watching you panic.”

Desmond makes a face. “Mean.”

“Well, we both know you’ll do great,” his dad says, and Desmond flushes a bright red.

“ _ Dad— _ ”

“Relax,” his dad says, still laughing at him a little. “You practiced plenty for this, and I know you love it. That matters a lot.”

“I just don’t want to choke,” Desmond mutters. He hates admitting that out loud, and can’t quite look at his dad while he says it.

“You won’t choke.”

“But what if—”

“Desmond.” Again, there’s that flash of laughter. “Try to believe in yourself a little, okay? You are not going to choke. I promise.”

Desmond didn’t have a lot of confidence in himself, especially not during meets. But he’s a little bit better than usual today, because at least he knows his dad has some faith in him, but he’s still twitchy and tense at first. In fact, it’s not until he’s at the starting line, getting into position, that he starts to calm down.

Yea. He can do this.

He runs. It’s something he loves, he loves letting go, pushing himself, just looking out over miles of flat land, and pushing himself for the horizon.

-//-

September 16, 2012

-//-

“Who was that?” Desmond asks, jogging up to Lucy. He’s supposed to be helping Rebecca and Shaun move all their stuff from the van down to the basement, but if Lucy can duck away for a phone call, he can duck away to be nosy about the phone call. “Did you say something about Paris?”

“Just one of the other Assassins calling,” Lucy said dismissively. “We’re coordinating forces.”

“But we’re in Italy,” Desmond points out, gesturing around at Monteriggioni’s villa. “Why are you coordinating with someone going to France?”

“He wanted to meddle,” she tells him. “Trust me, that guy? Sending him away was the best thing I could have done.” Desmond’s about to ask, but she changes the subject immediately. “How are you feeling? Still seeing things?”

That, of course, makes Desmond droop a little. “No,” he says, but that doesn’t make him feel much better because even if he’s not seeing things  _ now _ , he knows he will be again soon. “Not… right now.”

“Sorry,” Lucy says, glancing away. “I shouldn’t have asked. I mean… this was Ezio’s home.”

Desmond sighs and leans against a low wall next to her. After a second, Lucy joins him. “It feels as much like home as mine does,” he admits. “I grew up in this… little town in the middle of nowhere. Nothing but flatland for miles. I mean, it was the kind of place—” He cracked a smile. “I had this teacher in high school, he used to say it was the kind of place where you could spend all afternoon watching your dog run away. And it’s not much, but it’s my home. You know? I could… I don’t know, I could talk about it for hours. Dumb stuff I did with my friends in school, the best places to eat, the old house on Fourth Street everyone said was haunted…” He sighs again, and kicks moodily at the  ground. “That’s my home. I grew up there and I know it. And now this place feels like home. This place! I never set foot in here before today and it feels like I’ve come home and I  _ haven’t _ .”

“Desmond?”

He realizes he’s babbling, and closes his eyes so he won’t see Lucy’s expression of concern. “Sorry,” he whispers.

Lucy’s hand on his shoulder feels distant and ghostly. Less real than the memories of Ezio’s long dead friends. Desmond opens his eyes anyway, and offers her a thin smile, as if she was actually making him feel better.

“Don’t be sorry,” Lucy says quietly. “It’s not your fault. And honestly? Honestly, Desmond, look at me.”

He tries to do as he’s told, but sometimes her face doesn’t quite look like hers. That happens, sometimes. He’ll look at faces, and people from Altair’s life or Ezio’s will just sort of superimpose themselves on top and Desmond can’t tell which parts are real and which are just his growing insanity. “Sorry,” he says again, the word just slipping out.

“Desmond,” Lucy says again. She keeps saying his name, insistent, like she’s afraid he’s going to forget.

Oh God. That’s going to be a whole thing, isn’t it? He might forget his name one day, or more than that. It’s completely reasonable to imagine a day when he won’t know himself anymore.

“You’re doing fine,” Lucy says. “I know it might not seem like it right now, but you’re doing so much better than any other subject. You’re surviving, you’re fighting the bleeding effect, you’re hanging onto who you are.”

“It doesn’t seem like much,” Desmond says doubtfully. “A toddler can do that.”

“Yea,” Lucy says. “Well, the standards change when you go in the animus. “Desmond, it’s almost over now, okay?”

“Is it?” he asks doubtfully. Ezio’s life feels never ending, and so does this run from Abstergo.

“It sure feels like it,” Lucy says. “I know you’re in this neck deep, Desmond, but from where I’m standing, things are looking better.” She smiles encouragingly at him. “You’re doing great, better than anyone else I’ve seen go into an animus. And this is almost over, and you are going to survive. Okay?”

Desmond doesn’t answer for a second. Then he shakes his head, and says, “I really hope you’re right.”

“I am,” she says. “Now let’s go. You have memories to live and an apple to find, right?”

Desmond takes a deep breath. Right. The apple. This is bigger than him, it’s bigger than her, it’s bigger than anything he ever dreamed he’d be involved in. By now, after everything he’s lived through, Desmond has come to believe in what they’re fighting for. The apple can’t fall into Templar hands, and he’ll do whatever it takes to keep it safe. Feeling a little bit better—but only a little—he forces a smile, and heads inside. Time to get started.


	10. Chapter 10

December 25, 2003

-//-

Desmond is in crutches for Christmas this year, so William hears him when  he gets out of bed and starts limping around. The doctor told him to stay off his feet until his broken leg has a chance to heal, and William’s been reminding him day in and day out since then. He knows how important it is to take care of an injury.

Still. Doesn’t matter. His kid’s stubborn.

William gets up while Desmond’s still banging around in his room. He wants to get over there before Desmond tries to get down the stairs by himself—the last thing they need is him taking another fall. He changes quickly, and heads upstairs, where Desmond complains about William offering to help but eventually allows it.

“I’m only going to be on the crutches for like another week,” Desmond says, as he hobbles down the stairs.

“A week and a half,” William corrects.

“Same thing,” Desmond mutters. “Come on, Dad, I’m fine, I can get down the… stairs…”

William glances over at Desmond as they come down the stairs and the living room comes into view. With Desmond in a cast, they haven’t done much for the holiday, not until last night. That’s when William took his chance to put up the tree, string the lights, and lay out the presents.

It’s a little pointless, maybe, a little sentimental, but that first surprised smile that flashes across Desmond’s face means it’s worth it. Just for that moment.

“Seriously?” Desmond asks. “You did all this last night?”

“After you went to bed,” William says. “I know you’re a little old for Christmas now, but I thought, with your leg… I know how much that can hurt.”

“Yea?” Desmond grins as he maneuvers onto the couch, propping his leg up on a cushion and reaching for a present. “You ever break your leg?”

“Sure,” William says, handing him the gift he’s trying to reach. “Plenty of times. My leg, three fingers, a couple of ribs, my nose—”

“Geeze, Dad,” Desmond laughs. “What were you doing that got you that many broken bones?”

And William has to remind himself that Desmond knows nothing. His life is a million miles away from the bitter battles of William’s younger days, and that’s all for the better. But something about this day, and Desmond’s all-too-familiar cast, and this exact question at this exact time, makes him open his mouth.

“I know how to fight,” he says, and then when Desmond raises a skeptical eyebrow, he adds, “For what I believe in.”

“And does it hurt?” Desmond asks. “When you break that many bones at once, does it hurt a lot?”

“I imagine it would,” William says. “But it wasn’t all at once.”

“So you got hurt,” Desmond says. “And then you kept fighting. And you broke some more?”

“Sometimes you have to fight,” William says. “And if what you’re fighting for is important enough, sometimes it doesn’t even hurt.”

“This hurts,” Desmond says, and William is relieved to hear him change the subject without any prompting. When Desmond points at his crutches, William even manages to smile.

“Well,” he says. “Maybe don’t go playing on the ice.”

“It didn’t seem like bad idea at the time,” Desmond mutters.

“How about now?”

There’s a short pause, then Desmond admits, “It seems like a pretty bad idea now.”

William smiles, and gives Desmond a careful pat on his cast. “Just don’t do it again,” he says. “I’d rather not see you hurt like this. Or worse.”

He means it. Really he does. Because deep down, William knows for a fact that he’d throw himself into any danger if he could protect his son from even a second’s worth of harm.

-//-

September 21, 2012

-//-

Paris, it turns out, is a trap. William doesn’t even suspect until it’s almost too late, when he’s opening the door to the safehouse Lucy had directed him too. There’s just half a second where he takes in the sound of people moving through the room toward him, of shades of darkness in the supposedly empty room, and then they’re on him.

There’s no time for thought as they come at him, just blood pounding in his head and the swift movement of the fight. The men waiting for him here are skilled, cold and brutal in their efficiency. There was a time when William could have stood his ground and fought them all without much thought, but now it’s only the thought of Desmond that keeps him on his feet at all. In the end, he has to run, limping from a deep gash to his left leg, one hand clasped over his side where a bullet’s grazed him.

Luck must be on his side, because after half an hour of dodging and running, William is finally satisfied that he’s lost them. One or two are dead at least, he’s pretty sure. But the rest…

Well. He’ll just have to get out of Paris as quickly as possible, that’s all there is to it, and William’s pretty sure he knows where to go. There’s something about that safehouse that doesn’t sit right with him. There’s no sign that Desmond or Lucy or any other Assassin had been there or planned to be there. From the brief glances William had gotten, the entire building had seemed empty. Deserted.

Like maybe it was never supposed to be a safehouse in the first place.

But if it isn’t a safehouse, that means Lucy is either incredibly inept at her job, or she’d intentionally mislead him. William has a sick feeling he knows which one it is. Italy. He has to go back there, track her down, because if this is the wild goose chase William is starting to think it is, then she sent him away for a reason.

God, she’s with Desmond.

It’s not the first time William has had to bandage himself up after a fight, and it doesn’t take him long to get his ribs and his leg bandaged and mostly sturdy. Then he hurries back the way he’d come from, only stopping once on the way to call Gavin.

“What.”

William is on a burner phone, driving a stolen car, and his grip tightens on the steering wheel when he hears Gavin’s tense voice.

“I know you weren’t expecting to hear from me,” he says.

“I wasn’t particularly interested in it,” Gavin says. “No. I gave you all the help I could, more than you deserve, and I just don’t have anything else to spare. Now you can either accept that and hang up now, or—”

“I don’t think the contact you gave me is an Assassin,” William interrupts.

That works. Gavin goes quiet for a second, and when he speaks again, his voice is a little less hostile. “Stillman? Why? What happened?”

“Well,” William says. “I got to Italy, and called her up, and she told me they were all on their way to France.”

“And?”

“Well, I got to France, and I found an elite team of Templars waiting for me.”

“Setup,” Gavin says. “ _ Shit _ . Head back to the area she was supposed to be in before she sent you off to Paris. We know the safehouse they were using in Florence was raided, we got the intel a couple days after you left. But if they’re hauling an animus, they won’t have gone far.”

“Still in Italy?” William asks. “Yea. I’m heading there now.”

“Good,” Gavin says. “I’ll get in contact with anyone I can, let you know when I hear more.”

“I’ll be ready,” William says. This is the warmest he’s heard Gavin since the first time they’d talked, but William has a feeling it has nothing to do with Gavin’s attitude toward him. If there really is a traitor, then that trumps… everything.

“You’re the only Assassin we have in the area,” Gavin says. “I can’t spare anyone else, so—”

“She’s with Desmond,” William says. “If she really is a traitor—” And she is, oh God she has to be. “If she’s a traitor, Lucy Stillman is going to die.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Argh why does this story still exist -_- Sorry to anyone that's put up with it this long--I don't know what I was thinking when I wrote this, but clearly I was not aiming for good writing. Or at least I was falling _way_ short.


	11. Chapter 11

May 15, 2004

-//-

Desmond doesn’t go to prom  _ alone _ , he goes to prom  _ with friends _ . There’s a difference. Because he’s not a loser, he’s not that weird guy that can’t get a girl to go to prom with him. He’d just rather go with his friends.

They have a decent time. The food’s bad but the music is good, and there’s a particularly fantastic moment when the biggest dick on the football team gets kicked out because he tried to sneak a flask under his jacket. Thats the high point, or at least that’s what Desmond expects will be the high point.

Because he doesn’t  _ expect  _ to run into Linda Moonwell in the parking lot after the dance ends. He doesn’t  _ expect  _ her to not have a date either, he doesn’t  _ expect  _ that they’re going to start talking and that one thing will lead to another and that somehow he’s going to end up kissing her.

As far as first kisses go, this isn’t the best one Desmond could have imagined. He barely even  _ knows  _ her, they took AP World together and that’s it, they’re pressed against the beat up mini van she borrowed from her mom to get here, and Desmond is too busy trying to figure out what he’s doing to actually enjoy it.

Then when it’s all over, she pulls back, looks him in the eye, and says, “I think I might be gay.”

So yea. Really just not… not at all what he’d have pictured.

He’d been planning to go out after prom with his friends. They have a couple rooms in the local Marriott, and there were loose plans to head there and see how much trouble they could get into without their parents around.

Somehow, Linda Moonwell has managed to kind of cool Desmond toward the whole thing. He makes some excuse about feeling sick, and heads home instead. His plan is to slink upstairs and crawl into bed and think about how apparently he’s such a bad kisser he convinced Linda Moonwell that she’s gay, or something, but to his surprise his dad is still there.

“Desmond,” he says. “I thought you were going out with your friends tonight.”

“I had a—a change of plans.”

His dad’s sitting at the kitchen table, reading through some thick, dull looking book. Something for work maybe. Desmond slouches across the room and sits across from him.

“Why did you have a change of plans?”

Desmond can hold out against his dad’s questioning. He knows that if he really doesn’t want to talk about it, his dad won’t make him talk. But he gives in anyway, because who else is he going to talk to about it?

“This girl from my history class kissed me after it was over,” Desmond says. “It was really bad, and I didn’t feel like going out after.”

“Ah,” his dad says. The book is closed, and pushed aside. “Well, when it’s the right person, you’ll know.”

Desmond hesitates this time. But it’s a weird night already, and he’s never really asked before. So eventually, Desmond asks, “Did you know? When it was Mom?”

The word feels like a heavy stone weighing on his tongue. They never talk about his mom. Desmond barely remembers her. She’s a vague, warm feeling in his early memories, and nothing else. Not even a picture.

At first, he doesn’t think his dad is going to answer, which would be a fair reaction. Desmond isn’t planning to push, but then his dad… answers.

“Yes,” he says. “I knew the day I met her that I was in love with your mother.”

“Where did… where did you meet her?”

His dad is quiet for a little while. Then he says, “I had an aunt.”

“An aunt?”

“Yes, Desmond, an aunt,” his dad says, and although there’s a small smile on his face, Desmond can’t match it. He’s suddenly realizing that he doesn’t even know if he has any aunts of his own. Uncles, cousins—the only family he’s ever known is his dad. “She lived on the other side of the country, so we rarely saw each other, except for once every few years when I’d go out that way for work. So I was staying with this aunt…”

His eyes have lost focus slightly, and he’s clearly thinking, remembering. “And I went out for a walk, to get away from her for a while.” The smile is a little sharper, almost laughing. “She was a nice person, but a little… overbearing, sometimes. She had a lot of cats. So I went down to this park, a little way away, and… she was there.”

“And?” Desmond prompts, when his dad stops talking and doesn’t seem like he’s going to start again. “How did you meet? What did you say? Dad, how did you  _ know  _ she was different?”

“There’s not much of a story,” his dad says. “I just sat down next to her. Introduced myself, and then she told me her name—and I just knew.”

He stands up, walks around to prod Desmond out of his chair. “Someday,” he promises. “You’ll meet someone. And maybe it’ll happen right away, maybe it won’t happen for years, but eventually you’ll get to the point where you just know. Now get up. Get to bed. If you’re not going out with your friends, you might as well get some sleep.”

-//-

October 10, 2012

-//-

Lucy Stillman is keeping him alive. She’s the  _ only  _ thing thing keeping Desmond alive right now, he’s pretty sure, because everything else in his life is so tainted with Ezio that he can’t keep his head on straight. There are days now, sometimes, when he’ll get up in the morning, get in the animus, get out again, do whatever’s expected of him, and go to bed without even once for a  _ second  _ being completely sure what his name is.

He lives in Ezio’s home, learns Ezio’s skills, lives Ezio’s life.

And then there’s Lucy, who doesn’t belong to Ezio at all. They have this standing meeting, most days, up on the roof. After the animus, after the daily debrief, after Rebecca and Shaun have gone to bed, Desmond and Lucy meet up on the villa’s roof. It’s not something they ever really planned, or started doing on purpose, it just… happened.

There are some days when they talk. About home, about their families, about the people they used to be. Those are the good days, when Desmond feels almost normal. But there are also days when he just can’t unfog his head. When he needs to work through whatever emotions Ezio has left him with, and he needs to cry or scream or hit something. Lucy is there on those days too. She holds him, or listens, or spars with him until one of them drops in exhaustion. There are days when it’s not Desmond that makes the climb up to the roof, but Ezio. Desmond… only has a vague idea of what happens on those days. But she’s good at talking him back to himself. Reminding him who he is.

There are days when they… the two of them…

Desmond’s twenty five years old, and he’s never felt like this about anyone else. Those nights, when he falls asleep next to her, Desmond doesn’t only feel like himself, he feels like any normal human being. Like his life and his mind aren’t just falling apart. He feels like he’s falling in love.

It’s not something he’s ever said out loud, not even to Lucy. It’s just a warm, secret feeling in the pit of his stomach when he looks at her, a secret bright spot in a series of miserable days that just won’t  _ end _ .

So… that’s what he’s thinking about. All that, racing through his mind in the single second it takes to close his hand around the apple of eden.

They’ve spent a lot of time getting to this point, going through Ezio’s memories, hunting for this artifact. And hey found it, and they came all the way out to the freaking  _ Colosseum _ , and they found the apple, hidden in a precursor vault. Which is great, it really is, except the second he touches it his body freezes and time seems to slow as Desmond loses control of his body entirely.

_ Just do it _ , a voice whispers, and if Desmond could have moved in that moment he would have shuddered at the sound of it. There’s no humanity in the voice. It’s as alien as the precursor technology around him, as alien as whatever had taken control of him when he put his hand on the apple.

_ Don’t fight it _ , the voice tells him, growing in volume and strength.  _ Kill her _ .

But Desmond fights it anyway, because Lucy is his friend, she’s his rock in all this insanity, and no… no precursor hissing orders in his head is going to make him do this. Let this moment stretch out to eternity if it has to, Desmond will never hurt Lucy. He won’t. He can’t.

_ Then see _ , she says. The voice is growing clearer in his mind as the seconds tick past, stronger.  _ See for yourself what she would do _ .

And time just shatters. It’s a little like the feeling he gets when he uses his eagle vision, a knowing more than a seeing. The voice, the precursor,  _ Juno _ , guides Desmond’s vision out of the present moment and into the future that could be, if Lucy lives through this moment.

Desmond sees her betray them. He sees her take the apple to the Templars, sees them take possession of the artifact and through it control of the world. He sees fire raining from the sky, and a date—December 21, 2012.

_ She is going to do all that _ , Juno tells him.  _ And more. Unless you kill her, here and now _ .

The world is going to burn in fire and ash. Desmond feels wet tears pricking at his eyes as his vision returns to the present day, and then—

Then he does it. He lunges forward, and drives his hidden blade into Lucy’s stomach. Because God, he just—he could have loved her. Maybe he does, he’ll never know now. But he can’t stand here and watch the world burn.

Lucy sways, for just a second, as the life rushes out of her. Stupidly, futilely, Desmond reaches out with his other hand to hold her up, even as he can feel the blood running along the blade on his other arm.

“Lucy,” he croaks, but she’s dead before she hits the ground, dead before he can explain, before he can apologize.

Dimly, swaying on his own feet, Desmond hears Rebecca and Shaun shouting for him, but he can’t process any of it. His mind feels like it’s just… shutting down, piece by piece, and he’s grateful for it because he can’t… he just can’t deal with this.

He’s vaguely aware of the pain as he hits the ground too, and the last thing he sees are her blank, staring eyes. Then everything goes black.


	12. Chapter 12

May 22, 2004

-//-

William almost doesn’t make it to Desmond’s graduation. 

Oh, he gets to the school alright. Takes Desmond into the auditorium, where his son waves him off with an eye roll and a ‘parents are supposed to be over  _ there _ , Dad.’ But then that’s when he almost loses it, because it’s been just him and Desmond, just the two of them, since that day over a decade ago when they ran from the Farm in the middle of the night. William has spent all that time focusing on Desmond. On keeping him safe and giving him a life he can be happy with. Now that Desmond’s graduating, going off to school, going his own way—

He heads to the men’s room, which is empty right now, and stands in front of the sink, staring at his reflection in the mirror. When Desmond was born, he never imagined they’d end up here. After the attack on the Farm, he never thought they’d survive to this day. And now that they’re here, William has no idea what he’s going to do next.

Looking for a distraction, he turns away from the mirror and surveys the dimly lit bathroom behind him. Suspicious stains dot the tiled floors and the fading toilet. Scrawls of graffiti line the walls,  newer marks covering older ones. William tilts his head sideways to read someone’s comment on a Mrs. DiMarco, who the writer doesn’t seem to care for much.

William sighs. At this moment, everything in here just seems so overwhelmingly… ordinary. And Desmond isn’t ordinary, he’s an incredible kid that deserves the best possible life. Is this it? What if William had taken them to another compound when the Farm burned, let Desmond been raised in the Brotherhood? Would he have had a happier life? A better one?

For another minute or so William just stands there, staring at  _ Mrs. DiMarco is a bitch _ , barely thinking anything, until he hears the dim strains of the high school’s orchestra warming up for the student’s march in. Maybe it doesn’t matter, because this is the life they have, and Desmond’s happy with it, and he’s about to celebrate an accomplishment that he’s worked plenty hard to achieve.

William shakes his head, and leaves the bathroom. It’s time for him to go watch his son graduate from high school.

-//-

October 10, 2012

-//-

“So what are they doing here, of all places?” William asks Gavin over his com as he heads for the Colosseum. Ever since he came to the realization that Lucy isn’t really on their side, he and Gavin have been talking a little more freely. They’re not back to where they used to be, and they might not ever get back to being friends like that again. But Lucy Stillman is a common enemy, threatening the Assassins Gavin leads as much as the son William is determined to rescue.

“They’ve been tracking a piece of eden,” Gavin says, and William frowns. That means the Templars will know, if Lucy does, and he understands the importance of keeping the Templars away from whatever they’re hunting. “One of them—Shaun Hastings—reached out to me earlier to check that there were no Templars in the area before they headed out here.”

“And you didn’t tell him he’s working with a traitor?” William asks sarcastically.

“No,” Gavin says. “I knew I could send you out after them, and Shaun’s not a fighter. Lucy is. I don’t want him tipping her off.”

“Fair enough,” William says. “But if you’re counting on me for this plan, I guess I’d better get to rescuing.”

“I wish you would,” Gavin says, and then the com crackles as he leaves William to his own devices.

The first thing he finds is the van. Still warm, and barely hidden—he wonders what the rush had been, to keep them from covering their tracks better. From there, it’s not hard to follow their path, down into a hidden entrance to the Colosseum.

William feels a chill run down his spine when he sees what’s waiting for him inside. It’s been a long time since he saw any precursor architecture, and even then it’s only ever been in pictures. He doesn’t know anyone that’s ever seen any of that in person. No one he knows has.

It looks like that’s about to change. William pushes back a creeping feeling of unease as he follows the path that Desmond (please,  _ please  _ let it be Desmond) had forged ahead of him. Finally he comes to an open space with—he knows right away that something awful has happened here, but the details come through in flashes, one thing at a time. First the two strangers—a man and a woman, younger than him—rushing forward, faces and posture tense. Then the flashes of something like a hologram, precursor technology maybe, a glowing woman frowning at him. And then Desmond on the floor.

Blood on his sleeve and on his hands. Eyes open but staring at nothing. Breathing, but far too quick and shallow. Everything in William panics at finding his son like this, but he freezes his reaction, pushes it aside because it’s not going to help right now.

“Hey!”

That’s the man William had briefly noticed earlier, pressing forward as William kneels next to Desmond.

“Who are you supposed to be?” the man demands, striding forward. Up close. William can see he’s shaking.

“He’s wearing a hidden blade,” William says, studying Desmond’s arms. It’s only then that he notices the blades have been used, and there’s a young woman already dead on the floor beside him. Almost absently, William reaches over and closes her eyes. The whole rest of his attention is caught up in his son, in finding a pulse, in checking that none of the blood is his.

“Who are you?” the man asks again, and William turns on him, planting himself firmly between Desmond and whoever this man is.

“I’m his father,” he snarls, and there’s a certain level of satisfaction when the man just takes a step back.

“ _ You _ ?” he asks.

“Yes,” William says. “Why? Were you expecting someone else?”

“No,” he says. “I’ve just heard a lot about you, from Desmond. I—look, I wish I could say it was good to meet you, but—these are shit circumstances.”

William wants to laugh, but there’s really nothing funny about it. “Who’s this?” he asks, gesturing to the woman Desmond had apparently just stabbed.

“She’s—Lucy Stillman. That’s—that was Lucy.”

William nods. He can’t say he’s surprised, after what she did to him. Leading him down the wrong path, deliberately leading him away from Desmond. “What happened to him?” he asked, changing the subject from Lucy. She was dead and gone now, she’d betrayed them, and now she was no longer a problem.

“Animus,” Shaun said. “And then… well.”

“Too much of the bleeding effect,” someone else said, and William looked up to see the other woman standing half a step behind Shaun. “And then the shock of Lucy—”

“And the apple,” Shaun interrupted. “Becca, don’t forget the apple.”

“As if I could,” she said, giving it a truly terrified look.

There were so many questions here, William wasn’t even sure where to start. “Okay,” he said, trying to make his voice sound authoritative. “Here’s what we have to do. You did a terrible job covering your tracks on your way in here, and either the police or the Templars a curious fucking bystander is going to come down here to see what’s going on. We need Desmond out of here and Lucy taken care of before then.”

“Taken care of,” Shaun echoes. “What exactly do you mean by—”

“You know exactly what I mean,” William interrupts. “She’s not an Assassin, she’s not one of us.”

“She’s a traitor,” the woman says quietly.

“ _ Rebecca— _ ”

“No, Shaun. Take a step back, look at it. And Desmond wouldn’t have just…” She gestures hopelessly to Lucy. “Done that to her if he didn’t… if he wasn’t sure.” She shares a look with Shaun, and William’s stomach turns over. So it had been like that between the two of them, had it?

But at least it convinces Shaun to get moving, because he starts heading for Lucy. He doesn’t ask questions, and William nods in slight approval. So he’s gotten rid of a body before.

“We need to get Desmond back into the animus,” Rebecca says, when Shaun is busy. She and William are bent over Desmond now, hauling him up off the floor.

“Why?” William asks. “Based on what he’s heard of the animus, he can’t believe this is a good idea. “If the animus did this to him in the first place, then why—”

“Because it’s all… it’s  _ in  _ his head, whatever’s hurting him,” Rebecca says. Her tone drops into something low and urgent, and William forces himself to swallow back his instinct to argue. “So obviously whatever we do to help him, it’s going to have to get right inside his head too.”

“But the bleeding effect,” William says urgently. “Isn’t this going to make it even worse for him?”

“Worse?” Rebecca asks. “How could it get  _ worse _ ?”

And she’s right. Little as William wants to hear it, she’s right. Desmond is unconscious and unreachable, so he helps Rebecca pick him up, and bear him on their shoulders to transport Desmond from the hidden precursor temple back to the van.

Shaun is already waiting there for them, so Rebecca enlists his help to get Desmond strapped in, then goes up front to drive.

William stays in the back, with Desmond. He holds his son’s hand, and for what seems like forever, he just begs him quietly to come back.


	13. Chapter 13

January 11, 2005

-//-

“I picked a major,” Desmond says. He drops the announcement into the middle of a relatively normal conversation with his dad, mostly to stop the stream of ‘have you been eating okay’ and ‘are you making friends’ and ‘how are your classes.’

Over the phone, his dad’s careful silence comes through as a low hiss of static. “Another one?”

Desmond grins. “No,” he says. “For real this time. I filled out the paperwork and everything.”

“Didn’t you fill out the paperwork the last time you picked a major?” his dad asks. “What was that last one?”

“Comparative literature.”

His dad sighs, and Desmond almost laughs at him. He’s been really patient, waiting while Desmond hops his way from one potential major to the next. But this is it, this is the one that’s going to stick.

“So what is it this time?” his dad asks. “Competitive ice skating? Horticulture? Underwater basket weaving?”

“Global studies,” Desmond says. “And congratulations on offending all the ice skaters, horticulturists, and basket weavers.”

“Global studies,” his dad says. “What exactly do you want to do with that?”

“Dunno yet,” Desmond says. “But I think it’s going to be a good fit.”

“Why?”

The question is harsh, but Desmond isn’t offended. In all the conversations he’s had with his dad about what his major is going to be and what his future will hold, they always wind up at that question. Why does Desmond want to do whatever he’s trying to do?

And this time, Desmond has an answer. “Dad,” he says. “There’s a big world out there. Lots of problems, and I guess I just… I don’t know what I want to do, but I want to help solve them. So this one just seems good. Kind of broad, lots of room for me to do… whatever I decide to do when I graduate. Right now, I just know I want to make a difference.”

“You will.” His dad’s voice is warmer now, almost relieved. “I know you will.”

-//-

???

-//-

When Desmond next opens his eyes, he’s in a surreal world of smudged grays and blacks, lying on hard ground with uneven rocks digging into his back. The pain is oddly distant, and Desmond’s first thought is that he must be back in the animus. Then he looks down at himself, not Ezio, not Altair, and wonders.

“It’s called animus island,” a voice says, and Desmond is on his feet, braced for a fight, before he’s even had a chance to process what he’s said. Eventually, though, it gets through to him.

“Animus island?” he repeats. Whatever that is, he doesn’t like the sound of it. After everything he’s been through, after the animus and the bleeding effect and killing Lucy, he feels sort of adrift in his own skin, uncertain of absolutely everything. But the animus? He’s terrified of that, deep in his core, and nothing he does will ever change that.

He takes in the speaker at last. It feels like his brain is just processing things more slowly than it should be, but he gets there in the end. A man, slightly older than him, wearing a leather jacket and a frown.

“Who are you?” he demands. “This is—something to do with the animus? But not a memory?” It’s not a memory, no way is it a memory. Desmond’s never looked like himself while reliving Altair or Ezio’s lives.

“Not a memory. This is—you any good with computers? I guess this is kind of the  _ hello world _ for the animus.” The man tilts his head back and spreads his arms, dramatically indicating the whole of that sad, sorry island.

Desmond stares at him, more confused than impressed, and then at last says, “I’m not really all that good at computers, actually. Seriously,  _ who  _ are you?”

The man lowers his head to stare at Desmond, then laughs. “Right,” he says. “Hello, introductions. My name’s Clay.”

“I—” That’s a name that means absolutely nothing to him. “Sorry. I don’t know you.”

“Right,” Clay says. “But I guess you’ve probably heard of Subject Sixteen.”

So then it all clicks. “You’re him? But you’re…”

“Dead,” Clay (or Sixteen, or whatever the difference is, if there is a difference) says. “Yea. I kind of uploaded a copy of myself to the animus before I died, so I’m really not… I don’t know. I’m not all me.”

Desmond reaches out, more out of a senseless, instinctual curiosity than anything else. The man feels real, or as real as anything else in the animus. “You’re fine,” he announces,” and Sixteen gives him a twisted smile.

“Fine,” he says. “Yea. Sure. Slightly dead, but fine.”

Desmond’s laugh is a little twisted too. “Just slightly dead,” he said. He took a step or two back, nervous. “I’m not…?”

“Dead?” Clay asks. “No. Just…”

He trails off, but Desmond thinks he sort of gets it. It’s not like he doesn’t remember what just happened. He’d killed Lucy. And he understood why he had to do it. He’d been convinced that there was no other choice, and he hadn’t fought it. That didn’t make it any easier to remember the way it had felt.

“Your brain is pretty much scrambled eggs right now,” Clay says. “And you’re lucky, really.”

“Because of my mashed potato brain?” Desmond asks.

“Scrambled eggs,” Clay corrects. “And stop thinking about food, you’re not going to be getting any of that while you’re in here.”

Desmond makes a face and rubs at his arm. He can’t really feel any of what’s going on with his body in the real world while he’s in here, but it’s easy to imagine the IV going into his arm. Better than nothing, probably. But that makes him think, suddenly, about things he’s just not entirely comfortable with. “So what happens now?” he asks. “Am I just stuck in here forever?”

Clay smiles at him. It’s not creepy, the way some of his earlier expressions have seemed ever so slightly off, like he’s forgotten how to talk to other people. “You’re  _ lucky _ ,” he says. “Whoever’s taking care of you, they didn’t just leave you in a coma, they put you in an animus. You have a chance to put your brain back together.”

“Unscramble the eggs?” Desmond suggests.

“And stick them back the carton,” Clay says. He frowns. “I think this metaphor has gone far enough.”

“Probably,” Desmond agrees weakly. “But how do I… do all that stuff? With the eggs or whatever? How do I get my brain back together so I can wake up again?”

“How do you think?” Clay asks, a little glum. “This is an animus. You need to get back through more of your ancestors’ memories, straighten everything out, get yourself some closure. So you can separate your memories from theirs.”

“I can do that,” Desmond says. If there’s one thing he’s really good at, it’s memories. “I—”

“ _ —sure this is—help him? _ ”

Desmond’s whole body goes stiff and alert, so focused on listening that he’s half convinced his body in the real world must be sitting up and listening too.”

“Desmond?” Clay asks.

“That’s my dad,” Desmond says, voice little more than a whisper. It’s impossible (or is it? Suddenly, he remembers the old files Lucy had shown him—his dad. The Assassin). But there it is. The voice is unmistakable.

“ _ —not sure, _ ” a second voice says. Rebecca. “ _ But—still—best shot at— _ ”

The voices are indistinct, and Desmond can tell he’s missing most of the words, but it feels like a jolt of adrenaline. He strides toward Clay, a sudden desperation stirring in his chest. His eyes go upward, though, as though he can will himself back up there to the real world, to where his dad and his friends are waiting for him. “What do I have to do?” he demands. “Where do I have to go, how do I start? I have to get back, I  _ have  _ to—”

“Desmond,” Clay interrupts, reaching out and putting a hand on Desmond’s shoulder. It feels solid, it feels like it should be reassuring, but Desmond can only think about how Clay feels so solid and the voices of the people he cares about (the real, living people) are so impossibly far away.

He steps back, trying to mask the rudeness of the motion by pacing slightly back and forth. “I need to get back up to them, I can’t just keep them waiting for me.”

“Then start by not panicking,” Clay says, raising his voice a little. Even so, Desmond almost doesn’t hear him. He’s too caught in the claustrophobia of being trapped down here and not being able to get out. “Desmond! If you want to get out of here, then all you can do is start working on those memories. Okay?”

“ _ Where— _ ”

Again, Clay grabs him by the shoulder, and this time physically spins Desmond around to point him in the direction of a stone archway halfway down the island. “Go through there,” he says. “Start there.”

-//-

Days pass. Impossible to know how many in the real world, but it feels like months, living through the end of Ezio’s life. It is helping, though. Desmond can feel it. Even as his synch rate continues to climb, and it gets easier and easier to slip into his ancestor’s skin—both Ezio and, occasionally, Altair—he can feel his own mind improving and repairing itself.

It’s easy to let time slip away from him in the animus, so Desmond makes a point of stopping after every few memories. He’ll leave Constantinople behind, and return to that barren island with Clay. Sometimes they talk, although that’s always a little awkward. Clay hates talking about his past, and there’s no change on the island, not ever, so they’re only left with Desmond’s life to talk about. And that just makes him desperate to get back up to his dad again.

Luckily, Clay seems to understand, and there are also the times when they just sit in silence, a little distance away from each other, while Desmond strains to hear anything from the real world. Clay can’t hear it—he’s nothing but strings of code, he has no ears, he has nothing left in the world. So Desmond is the only one that hears those snatches of conversation, and people occasionally talking to him.

And when he’s heard all this, and feels that connection again with the people he’s left behind, Desmond gets back up, and goes back to work.


	14. Chapter 14

Desmond’s a pretty busy kid. He’s never run himself ragged with school or sports, thankfully, but William’s spent years keeping track of Desmond’s schedule, marking down when he has to pick him up and where from, when he has to wake up on Saturdays to make sure Desmond gets to wherever he’s going, all that.

Now, suddenly, Desmond’s away at college and William has nothing to keep track of but himself. Which should be something he’s happy about, of course. One less list of things taking up space in his brain. But it only takes a couple weeks for William to realize he misses having Desmond’s schedule in his life. Misses driving him around, misses worrying about him—or at least, misses when Desmond would come home at the end of the day, and he could _stop_ worrying about him.

He’ll adjust. There are other parents he works with, single parents even, who say that it gets easier. You don’t exactly get used to your kids being gone, but you heal over the holes in your life. You find new ways to fill the time, and you get used to hearing from them less often.

The problem is that William has never really been alone before. He’d grown up in an Assassin compound, long before the Templars had nearly wiped them out. He’d had siblings, older kids running around, people there all the time. He’d grown up with the people he’d eventually worked with, the people he went on missions with, fought with, killed with.

And when the Farm was destroyed, and it was just him and Desmond, even that had been enough. Now…

William’s life is just so much quieter. He gets up, he goes to work, he comes home, there’s no one there. Out of a sheer lack of anything else to do, he starts training again. It used to be something he did every single day. When he was an Assassin (and when, exactly, did he stop thinking of himself as an Assassin, or at least an Assassin in exile?), this was something he really needed to know, something he absolutely needed to be good at. Now all his old skills are rusted and unused. What used to be second nature is an effort.

He’s not really sure if there’s a point to training himself up again. Maybe he’ll never use any of it. But at least it’s something to do. It keeps him busy in the evenings while Desmond’s away, and it keeps him from thinking too much about what his life is supposed to be now that he’s alone. There doesn’t seem to be anywhere for him to go forward from here, and he’s just sort of… stuck.

He practices old exercises, stretching out muscles that haven’t been worked this much in years. He throws knives until he can hit a target as well as he ever could. He visits a gun range, spars with shadows, practices his weapons. But really, it’s just killing time. It doesn’t satisfy him the way it used to.

One night, about a month after Desmond’s first day of school, William’s down in the basement working on swordplay—an old discipline, but one he remembers learning from his father and grandfather when he was young—when his cell rings. William puts the blade away, and reaches over to answer the phone.

“Hello?”

“Hey, Dad,” Desmond says, and William smiles. “Sorry I took so long to call.”

“Don’t worry about it.” Reception in the basement has always been spotty. William heads upstairs, switching off the light on his way up, leaving his weapons down there in the dark.

“It’s been crazy here.”

“I’m sure.”

There’s a brief pause, then Desmond asks, “Are you doing okay? I mean, I have plenty of people around here. But you’re all on your own back home and I’ve been—”

“Oh,” William says. “Don’t worry about me, Desmond, I’m fine.” He hesitates, then adds, “Just call more.”

-//-

October 19, 2012

-//-

“… long is he going to stay here, though?”

“He’s an Assassin—”

“Yes, _technically_.”

“Shaun, he is an Assassin, and he can fight, and we really need that right now.”

“Well, yea, but he’s old. And he gave upon the Brotherhood once already, didn’t he? If Desmond wakes up, he’ll just take him and go…”

William opens his eyes as the voices drift away again. They’re camping in the van will they travel across Europe and head for a friendly airport where they’ll be able to pass Desmond through security as a medical traveler. That means that William spends most nights on the bench next to the animus, monitoring Desmond, while the other two sleep in shifts up front.

He must have overslept this morning, and overhearing that particular conversation is not the way he’d have chosen to start the morning. It doesn’t take a genius to realize that they’d rather have someone else with them. Someone that hadn’t left for twenty years, someone that wasn’t out of practice, someone else.

Anyone else.

But he doesn’t bring the conversation up, he never does. Let them say what they want, because the truth is that William has no idea what’s going to happen when Desmond wakes up (when, _not_ if). They can’t go home, can they? Running somewhere else might not work a second time. And after all this, William’s afraid of what Desmond will want to do. What if he wants to stay, and _fight_?

Torn by indecision, William stands there for a while, watching Desmond. He’s so unnaturally still in the animus, breathing but otherwise not moving a muscle. Even his face is perfectly blank, empty. William sighs and shakes his head. “We’ll have to have a talk, when you wake up,” he said. He sits back down, and takes his son’s hand in his, gently squeezing the man’s limp fingers. “There are a lot of decisions, and somehow you’ve gotten pulled right into the middle of all of it.” He’s quiet for a minute, and bows his head. “I never wanted this for you, Desmond. I never wanted you to be in danger, or afraid. And look at you now.”

“Hey.”

He turns at the voice, and realizes Rebecca’s let herself into the back of the van. She’s slightly easier to deal with than Shaun, but even with her there’s an unmistakable distance. It’s one William can’t quite bring himself to try and bridge, either, because he knows what they know, which is that he’d left. And he knows what they don’t know, which is that he doesn’t regret a single second out of all those years.

“Are we ready to go, then?” he asks, looking at Rebecca.

“Yea,” she says. “Shaun and I figured we’d drive an hour or two before stopping for food, are you okay with that?”

“Fine,” William says. “But thank you for letting me know.”

She could have left then, but for some reason she doesn’t. Instead she lingers just outside the van, and after a moment William climbs out to join her. It’s hard to have a conversation with Desmond right there, even if they all know he can’t exactly listen in right now.

“You know we both care about him, right?” Rebecca asks. “Me and Shaun? He’s part of our team, and you’re… I guess what I’m saying is that it’s okay if you want to be part of it too.”

“I thought I was,” William says. “One of you.” After all, he’s been traveling together for a few days, they’re all Assassins, he knows there’s that awkward space but…

“I just mean…” Rebecca falters, then pushes on. “You don’t have to protect Desmond from us, okay? We’re all together on this. And we’re all just… waiting for Desmond to wake up.”

William sighs, a long and heartfelt feeling. Then he admits, “I haven’t traveled like this in a long time. When I was… before I left, things were different. Travel like this only lased a few days, it was never permanent.” It costs him something to admit, “I don’t know what I’m doing here.”

And it’s a relief when Rebecca grins a little, and says, “Welcome to the brave new world. None of us has _any_ idea what we’re doing.”


	15. Chapter 15

March 3, 2007

-//-

“No,” his dad says. “Absolutely not.”

Desmond deflates, and tries to hide it—just a minute or two too late—by crossing his arms and frowning. “What do you mean, absolutely not? This is a good position. I worked _hard_ to get this interview, you can’t just—”

“You’re not taking it.”

“You can’t just forbid from going and not tell me why!”

“No son of mine is going to work at Abstergo. I’m sorry, Desmond, but that’s my final word. Call them. Tell them you can’t make it. Or better yet, don’t tell them anything at all. Just miss the appointment.”

Desmond stares. His dad is being completely unreasonable, and he doesn’t understand why. This isn’t like him at all, he’s not even offering him an explanation. “Dad,” he says quietly. “What did Abstergo ever do to you?”

“Nothing.”

“Obviously _not_ nothing.” Desmond’s not an overwhelmingly patient guy, and he’s never been able to wait his dad out before, but what’s he supposed to do? This is a big deal, and it’s got his dad really freaked out. That just doesn’t happen.

After maybe two or three minutes, his dad says, “Desmond, do you remember… when you were a kid…”

Desmond keeps waiting, but his dad doesn’t start talking again. After a while, Desmond gives in. He’s never going to win this waiting game. “I’m nineteen years old,” he says. “I’ll be twenty in a week. I’m old enough to make my own decisions.”

“In a lot of things,” his dad says. “Yes. But Desmond, you don’t know the full story here.”

“Because you won’t tell me,” Desmond points out.  “Dad, come on. What’s Abstergo to you?”

“Do you trust me, Desmond?”

“I…” Desmond slowly uncrosses his arms. This is a lot more serious than he’d thought it was. “Yea, Dad. Of course I trust you. But… don’t you trust me enough to tell me why?”

“It’s not that I don’t trust you,” his dad says. “It’s that this isn’t something you’ll want to know after you know it.”

Something about the way he says that sends chills down Desmond’s spine. He’s never really thought of his dad as someone with a past, but the way he talks about Abstergo makes Desmond reconsider. “Something happened,” he says. “Didn’t it? With you and Abstergo.”

His dad hesitates. Then nods. “Yes,” he says.

“But you’re not going to tell me what it is.”

His dad takes a breath. “Desmond,” he says. “Don’t go in for the interview.”

He still hasn’t given Desmond a single good reason not to. He hasn’t given Desmond any reason at all, good or bad. But in all of Desmond’s life, his dad had never given him a reason to not trust him. He’d never once done anything to hurt him. So this time, when his dad asks him to stop, Desmond hesitates only a second before he nods. “If it’s that important to you, I won’t go,” he says. “I’ll find something else to do this summer.”

The relief on his dad’s face when he says that is immediate and visible, and it makes Desmond feel bad for arguing in the first place. He doesn’t apologize though. Someday, he still wants to know why his dad dislikes Abstergo so much. But for now, instead of saying anything, he reaches over for his interview letter, and slides it across the desk and into the trash. He’s already turning to go when his dad calls him back. “Desmond.”

“I… yea?”

“Thank you.”

And that’s the only time they ever talk about Abstergo, or the interview. But that doesn’t mean Desmond stops wondering.

-//-

October 30, 2012

-//-

Desmond wakes with a sharp gasp, chest rising in what feels like his first real breath in a long time, and tries to roll off the animus. It takes three tries before his body will listen to him, but once he’s standing Desmond is happy to find that it doesn’t take much to get everything moving the right way again. He feels whole and healthy in a way he hasn’t since before the animus. Or… no. Not even then. Because back home he’d been _happy_ , but here he has a _purpose_. And maybe, if his dad really is here, happiness won’t be far away.

Only once he’s confident that he’ll be able to run or fight if he needs to does Desmond look around. He’s standing in the back of Rebecca’s truck, with just barely enough room to stand up. Everything else is boxes of supplies or stuff for the animus.

The back door is already open, so Desmond hops out, grinning as he realizes they’re in a forest somewhere. It feels so amazingly real, somehow—the sights, the smells, the sounds, everything. Nothing ever feels this real in the animus.

He’s still taking it all in when he hears footsteps behind him. Desmond spins around, on guard, but as soon as he sees who it is that all drops away. “ _Dad_ ,” he says, and dashes toward the man. His father’s arms around him take him back to his childhood, when any problem could be solved with a few words from his dad. Even now, with the world falling apart around him, just having his dad here makes Desmond feel instantly better.

His dad pulls back after a while, holding Desmond at arm’s length to study him. Desmond can only imagine how he must be seeing him, and tries not to squirm. He’s different, and he knows it. He feels it. But all his dad says is, “You look skinny.”

Desmond doesn’t answer at first. He’s too busy studying his dad, searching out the differences in him, because there are differences. Plenty of them. His dad is grayer around the temples than Desmond remembers, and his face has gone a little harder. The way he’s holding himself is different too, like a coiled spring, ready to fight. Looking at him now, it’s uncomfortably easy to imagine that his father really is an Assassin. Desmond’s eyes slip downward to where his father’s hidden blades are just barely visible.

He takes a step back, covering the motion as best he can. “Well, I haven’t been eating, remember. Just IVs or whatever while I was in there.”

Thinking about his dad’s hidden blades makes Desmond’s own wrists feel naked. What had Shaun and Rebecca done with his hidden blades? They must have taken them after… well, after Lucy.

“Desmond…”

“You never told me,” Desmond blurts, facing his dad again. “I saw what you did. Lu—the Templars showed me their file on you. What you did before Mom died. That place we used to live, the Farm, whatever it was called.”

“I know,” his dad says, speaking quickly as Desmond takes a pause to breathe. But Desmond’s not done, and he just speaks more loudly to keep his dad from finishing his thought.

“You killed people!” Desmond says. “A _lot_ of people, Dad. You—”

“Yes.”

The reply cuts off Desmond’s next accusation, because it’s not defensive the way he’d expected, or angry. “Desmond,” his father continues. “I am an Assassin. Before you were born, and when you were a child, I was active. I don’t know if you remember the way your mother and I arranged it. But we made sure one of us was always there for you, to give you a sense of family, and make sure you knew that you were loved.”

“But you…” Desmond hesitates at the question. He genuinely isn’t sure which upsets him more—the idea that his dad had killed Templars up until he was six years old, or that he’d stopped after that. “But you never told me,” he says instead, because that’s one thing he is absolutely sure about. “It wouldn’t have changed anything if you’d told me.”

“Desmond,” his dad says. “The Brotherhood changes _everything_.”

Desmond opens his mouth, and then closes it again. He bows his head slightly, because how is he supposed to argue with that? He’s seen it for himself, in the animus. “Well,” he says quietly. “It’s different now. I’m in this now too.”

“You are,” his dad says quietly, and it strikes Desmond as odd that in a way they’re brothers now, not just father and son. He pushes the thought away to deal with later. What he desperately needs right now is solid ground to stand on. Even if things are never the same between them again (and that thought makes him indescribably sad), he needs to know that there’s somewhere he can go from here.

“I took you away from all this to protect you,” his dad says quietly. “Do you remember the attack?”

“When I was a kid?” Desmond asks. His dad nods. “No. I remember…” So little, honestly. “I remember… moving into the house. And I remember how big I thought everything was. And how different.” Strange, really. How he can remember thinking that house was so _different_ from anything he’d ever known, but can’t remember what it was that came before it. “I remember—there was a hotel, somewhere.” Two beds and a table in the corner, but they only used the one bed because Desmond needed to be held, he couldn’t stand to be left on his own.

And before that…

A shooting star that wasn’t a shooting star.

“I had to take you away from that,” William says, watching Desmond’s face carefully. “That was our world burning. I had to give you a new one.”

Desmond looks back up at him again. He’s not sure, in that moment, who that new world had been for. After all, Desmond had still had his dad, and that was all the world he’d needed. He wasn’t the one that had lost a wife, a home, and the Brotherhood all at once.

“You did,” he said quietly, because whatever his dad’s reasons for running, the truth is that he’d given Desmond a fantastic childhood, and more love than he probably would have seen at the Farm. He knows what it’s like to grow up alone. Altair had lost his parents as a child, and Ezio had watched his father hanged as a teenager. Desmond knows the hole that comes with trying to replace a family with a brotherhood. “Dad…” He sighs. “I’m happy with how I grew up, but I’m not… I’m not a kid anymore, and that world was… it’s—now that I know what’s out here, I can’t go back. And you’ll… will you stay here too? You can’t exactly go home anyway, and—”

“Don’t be ridiculous,” his dad interrupts. “Of course I can’t go home while you’re here. And I wouldn’t to be anywhere else. He takes a step forward. “This is what matters, right? You and me. We’re a family. We’re a team.”

A team where one of them had lied to the other for a very long time, and with no intention of ever stopping. A family of two people, alone—

“Desmond!”

“Oh, God—Desmond.”

He takes a step or two back from his dad as Shaun and Rebecca spot them, and just in time because Rebecca jumps at him, wrapping her arms around his chest. Desmond smiles out of sheer surprise and hugs her back.

“Hey,” he says. “I figure it was you taking care of me in the animus, right? Thank you.”

“It was me keeping the computer going,” Rebecca says. “It was your dad mostly watching over you.”

“And me watching over the van,” Shaun adds. “Remember that?”

Rebecca rolls her eyes. “Yes, Shaun,” she says. “You had a very important job too.”

“I bloody well did,” he mumbles, and stalks off in a  huff that makes all of them smile.

Rebecca drops her voice, and admits, “He did actually keep us from a pretty nasty accident a couple miles out from Rome, but don’t you dare tell him.”

“I won’t,” Desmond promises, and anyway he’s seen the way Rebecca drives. It probably is thanks to Shaun that they got here (wherever here is) in one piece.

“Anyway,” she says. “We’re just getting the van unloaded, if you’re feeling up to it?”

“Uh—yea. Just give me another minute with my dad?”

Rebecca gives him a smile and a nod, then hurries off after Shaun.

Desmond turns back to his dad when they’re alone, and nods at him a little. They were a family of two people, all on their own. Now they’re not, because they have the Brotherhood around them. After a second, his dad nods back.

“Let’s go help with the van,” Desmond suggests.


	16. Chapter 16

May 15, 2009

-//-

“So it was good?” William asks, lifting what feels like his hundredth box and preparing to carry it down the three flights of stairs out of Desmond’s college apartment.

“Was what good?” Desmond asks, glancing up from where he’s taping a box of his own closed.

“College.”

“Was—” Desmond glances up at him, half laughing. “Yea, Dad. College was good. Thanks for asking.”

“Well.” William puts his box down and goes over to Desmond to hold it closed for easier taping. “I guess that was a good thing to spend all that money on.”

“You mean it was a good thing for me to take out all those student loans,” Desmond says.

“It was a group effort,” William says. “But I’m glad you’re moving closer to home.” It won’t be quite the same, of course. Desmond’s moving into an apartment closer to his new job, a ten minute drive from the increasingly empty feeling house where William lives. But ten minutes is better than an hour, and it’ll be nice to have him close again.

It’s while he’s thinking this through, while he’s genuinely happy about Desmond coming home again, that he hears something that makes him sit up and pay attention. Desmond’s TV is still unpacked, and they’ve left it tuned to the news while they pack just to have some noise in the background. William hasn’t really been listening, but the story that’s on now has his attention.

A state senator had been killed the night before, stabbed in the neck by a single, small blade. The senator had been hosting a party in his home at the time, and not a single guest had noticed an intruder or seen the death. William stands in silence, watching a breathless reporter stand in front of the senator’s house, explaining how the police have no suspects, no leads, and no comments. William can’t help a small, derisive snort. Even from this limited camera angle, he can see two or three good ways into the house that any Assassin worth their salt would be able to spot. And it must have been an Assassin. That’s a trademark hidden blade killing. And as the reporter goes on to give a description of the senator’s policymaking, William can see several reasons why the Assassins might have targeted him.

“Oh wow,” Desmond says, and William starts slightly. “Who would do something like that? Can you imagine?”

William opens his mouth, and closes it again. More than once over the past few years, he’s debated with himself whether he should just tell Desmond. It might help him to know someday. And not just in case the Templars find him, but because… well, the Brotherhood is something to be proud of. It’s a heritage that Desmond might want to know about, even if he’s gone a different way in his life. But how do you explain something like the Assassins to someone that didn’t grow up with that?

“No,” William says at last. “I can’t imagine.”

Desmond makes a little noise and goes over to turn the TV off. “Might as well get this packed up too,” he points out, and starts unplugging things.

William allows himself a second to just… stand there, and realize that he’s never going to be able to tell Desmond. Not ever, because Desmond won’t be able to see the good in it. He’ll just see the death, and he won’t understand.

“Dad?” Desmond says, still fiddling with the TV cords. “Can you give me a hand with this?”

“Sure,” William says, and hurries over to Desmond to do exactly that.

-//-

November 16, 2012

-//-

Two weeks in, and William still isn’t used to watching Desmond willingly climb into the animus every morning. He gets up, usually just after William and Shaun, and then the two younger men will get to the task of shaking Rebecca awake without being slapped. William doesn’t mind this part much, and he’ll stand out of the way while the other three tease and rib each other. No. No, William doesn’t mind seeing them like this, remembering the way he and Gavin had been when they were younger. Those were the good memories, the best memories, of his time as an Assassin. So in a way he was grateful Desmond was getting a chance to have that too.

In another way, he sometimes wondered if maybe teasing Rebecca so much that early in the morning was really a good idea. There were times when she looked absolutely murderous until she got her cup of coffee.

After that, one of them makes a quick breakfast. That task, like most of the other day to day chores, rotates among the four of them. They never linger over this, as much as William sometimes wishes they would. Because right after breakfast, Rebecca makes her way over to her workstation and boots up the animus. And then Desmond climbs onto the rock that he swears isn’t as uncomfortable as it looks like it is, sticks the needle in his vein (and there’s a skill William truly wishes his son had never had to learn), closes his eyes, and disappears.

Not literally, of course. But every single time he  _ willingly  _ climbs into that machine, it’s really like he’s not there at all anymore.

William can’t stand to watch it after a day or two. He’d stood at Desmond’s side every day while they traveled, but that was different. Desmond had been in there for his own good, he’d needed the animus to heal. Now?

“We need to find the key Haytham had,” Desmond says, when William brings up exactly this question one day.

“How do we even know there’s going to be something worthwhile on the other side?”

“Juno seems interested in it,” Desmond says, which makes William scowl. He’s never much liked the idea of the precursors, and he really doesn’t like them taking an interest in Desmond. “And we know this was where they were when they were trying to save their world from the solar flare. Like the one we’re getting in December.”

“But you don’t have to be the one to—”

“Yea I do, Dad,” Desmond says, voice just a little too sharp. “Because  _ Connor’s  _ the one that’s going to find the key we need, so it has to be either you or me in that animus, and I’m not going to ask you to do that.”

“I would,” William insists stubbornly.

“Well I won’t let you,” Desmond says, and for a moment there’s just silence. Desmond ducks his head. “I’m sorry,” he says. “That came out wrong. Dad… I can just about handle the animus. Now, anyway. Before I collapsed in Rome, I was a lot worse off, the stuff I saw in there… kind of cleaned me up, I guess. And I’m used to it. But you’d be starting from scratch, you wouldn’t know how to cope with it.”

William hates that Desmond knows how to cope with any of this.

“Thanks for offering,” Desmond says. “But really. This has to be done, and I have to do it.” He gives William an encouraging smile that succeeds in encouraging him not at all. “I’ll be careful. I’ll be fine, and when this is all over I’ll never have to go back in again.”

“I guess that’s all I can ask for,” William says disapprovingly.

Desmond gives him a quick smile, and he’s turning to go back toward the animus, when Shaun interrupts.

“Hey,” he says. “Desmond, William—we found one of those batteries that’s powering this place.”

“Where?” William asks. He knows Desmond had picked one up when they first got in, but none of them has been able to find any others in the rest of the temple, and they’ve looked.

“Manhattan,” Shaun tells him.

“New York?” Desmond asks, and it’s a relief to William to see him turn away from the animus. “Cool. So should we go do that now?”

“No time to waste, I think,” Shaun says. “End of the world and all that.

“Shaun—” Desmond cuts himself off from whatever he’d been about to say, and glances back at William.

He shouldn’t have to be worried about protecting William from anything. That’s not his job, and William stiffens a little. “He’s right,” he says, straightening up. “We don’t have much time until—until the end of the world. We should go after those batteries.”

Desmond glances back at him, looking a little mollified, and William reflects that at least it’ll keep Desmond out of the animus for a few hours.


	17. Chapter 17

January 5, 2010

-//-

It takes Desmond a terrifying eight months to get a job after he finishes school. Being unemployed is scary, and not like watching a horror movie or walking through a haunted house. It’s an entirely new kind of fear, an  _ adult  _ kind of fear, and it’s not fun at all.

So when he gets his first job—compiling research, sorting out the most important points, working for an end goal he isn’t  involved with and doesn’t understand—it’s not great but it’s a relief.

Only every once in a while, he wonders if this is really it. Twenty three years on this planet, and he sort of feels like he’s dead ended. Like… isn’t there supposed to be something  _ else _ ? More than just…

Sometimes, Desmond catches himself staring out the window. He’s in a sixth floor office, high enough to see the tops of the buildings next door. It’s easy to imagine just jumping out the window, running away and going… where, exactly? Doing what?

It’s a pointless daydream, and Desmond tries not to let it distract him too much. This is just a pit stop, he’ll get a better job soon, somewhere that he can really make a  _ difference _ .

This isn’t it for him. He’s going to do… something, someday. He’s not going to be here for the rest of his life.

But for right now… well, he’s not going to stop calling his dad to complain  about work—dads are good for that—and he’s not going to stop looking out the window, just every once in a while, and daydreaming about running away from it all.

-//-

December 1, 2012

-//-

It’s true that the animus is affecting Desmond a lot less now than it had back in Italy, but it is still exhausting. And as the get closer to December the twenty first, Desmond notices Rebecca is pulling him out less and less often. Once, he wakes up to the disorienting realization that he’s been in there for the past four days straight. He pretends this is normal, at least for his dad’s sake, but he  _ does  _ need to get out and do other things once in a while.

Going after the batteries is nice, because it’s a valid thing they actually need to do, because it lets him practice what he’s picked up from Connor in a setting that actually matters (the present, not the past), and because both of the batteries they’ve gone after so far have kept him away from the animus for a solid day.

But the third one is still proving pretty elusive, so the next time Desmond decides he really needs a break, he asks his dad if he wants to spar, instead.

“Spar?” his dad asks, blankly.

They haven’t done this before, so maybe the confusion makes sense, but Desmond just shrugs and says, “Yea. I probably need the exercise, right?”

“Probably,” Shaun shouts from the other end of the temple. “You do spend a lot of time lying around on your back.”

Desmond rolls his eyes. “Yea,” he says. “And what’s your excuse?”

“Oi!” Shaun protests, which makes all the rest of them smile.

Desmond is still smiling when he turns back to his dad. “So,” he says. “Seriously, do you want to do some sparring?”

His dad looks distracted for a second, maybe thinking, and then he says, “Yea.” He gestures for Desmond to follow him, picking up speed as they weave their way through the mess of equipment shoved just about everywhere in the temple’s main area.

“Where are we going?” Desmond asks, hopping over a thick cable.

“Outside,” his dad says. “There’s more room there.”

It’s hard to argue that, given how much equipment they’ve edged around already. So Desmond follows his dad up the steep slope to the mouth of the cave, and once they’ve both satisfied themselves that there’s no Templars waiting outside for them, they face each other in a small clearing near the cave’s entrance, and get to sparring.

“You know, Desmond’s dad says after about thirty seconds of this. “If we’d stayed at home, we would have spent a lot of time doing this.”

“What?”

“No.” He blinks and sakes his head, and Desmond hesitates a beat or two instead of taking advantage of the distraction. This is his dad, after all. It’s just sparring, it’s not a real fight. “Not our home, I didn’t  mean that.”

“What did you mean, then?”

“If we’d stayed at the Farm,” his dad says, and Desmond frowns at the reminder. His memories of that place and his early childhood are still sketchy at best, but Desmond doesn’t like most of what he’s learned about it. “We would have started doing this when you were about ten.”

“Why?”

“So you could grow up to be an Assassin,” his dad says, and Desmond rolls his eyes.

“Dad,” he says, a little exasperated. “That’s—I didn’t need all that. I had a good life, we did plenty of other stuff, and here I am.”

“You ended up an Assassin anyway,” his dad says, and Desmond grins. He never would have thought that would be something he’s proud of, never would have thought being an Assassin could be something worth chasing. But his dad had been one too, and before that his ancestors, all the way back to Altair and even farther. For someone that grew up without a family, suddenly finding a heritage and a goal—finding a purpose in the Brotherhood—had come as a surprise, but a good one.

And then they spar.


	18. Chapter 18

July 30, 2012

-//-

There’s about a month where William is just absolutely sure that this is the end, they’ve finally been found, and Abstergo is coming for him. For nearly the entire month of July, William is seeing Abstergo trucks everywhere. They’re always sort of around, of course. Abstergo has their fingers in medicine, entertainment… just about everything, these days. William had thought it was bad back when he was working out of the Farm and actively concerned with what the Templars were doing, but these days? It’s almost impossible to avoid them.

Still, the Abstergo presence is… disturbing. He knows it’s having an affect on his work, he knows Desmond’s noticed there’s something off, but William can’t help it. He’s seeing Abstergo  _ everywhere _ , and no amount of rational thinking can calm him down.

A coworker points out Abstergo is opening a new clinic up at the north side of town—it only makes sense they’d be around more. Desmond rolls his eyes and tells him he’s worrying over nothing, and who cares what Abstergo wants to do, anyway?

Neither of those reactions help William calm down any, because neither of them understands. Honestly, the only thing that’s stopping him from just grabbing Desmond and running is that he has no idea how he’d go about that. Desmond isn’t a child anymore. William can’t just sweep him off to a new town and start all over again. He’ll argue, he won’t understand, and William… isn’t sure where they’d even go, anyway.

So he waits, nervous and uncertain, until finally—right at the end of the month—Abstergo just leaves. William still sees the trucks occasionally, nut no more than he did before. The patrols of random Abstergo trucks just stop, and William cautiously lets himself relax.

“Maybe they got what they came for,” Desmond jokes one day, raising his eyebrows dramatically.

William barely answers him. Just a dismissive little grunt that makes Desmond laugh.

“I’ve just never been a fan of them,” he says, forcing himself to muster up more of an answer.

“You literally forbade me from applying there,” Desmond says, completely unperturbed. “You have some serious issues with those guys, Dad.”

“We all have our issues,” William says.

“They can’t be that bad,” Desmond says. “I mean, they’re everywhere, right?”

William gives him a look, and Desmond returns it, eyebrows raised and mouth twitching up into a smile.

“I wish you’d take this a little more seriously,” William says quietly, and Desmond’s smile vanishes.

“But there’s nothing to take seriously,” he says. “Is there? Dad, you’d tell me if there was something  _ actually  _ wrong with these guys that I should be worried about, right?”

William has considered it before, of course. And he’s  _ really  _ spent time thinking about it recently, with Abstergo closing in. But Desmond has no training and there’s nothing he could  _ do _ , even if he did know, even if Abstergo really is coming for him. This is William’s burden, it’s  _ his  _ job to protect Desmond from this particular threat, and he doesn’t need to put that on his son.

“Yea,” he says, trying to make himself sound reassuring. “Of course I’d tell you if there was actually something to worry about.”

“So… you’re just being weird.”

“That must be it,” William agrees quietly.

The conversation lulls and moves on to other topics, but much later, William finds his mind falling back to something Desmond had said earlier.

What if they have already found what they’re looking for? And what if they’re only biding their time until they decide to come swooping in to take it.

He does not sleep well that night.

-//-

December 12, 2012

-//-

The first two batteries had been easy enough to get.  _ Easy  _ being a relative term for Assassins, of course, where nothing is ever really easy. But the first battery, in Manhattan, had just been a quick drive across the state, and then a heart pounding quarter hour while Desmond climbed up the side of a half finished skyscraper. But that had turned out fine, Desmond is a lot more competent than William had been fully ready to give him credit for at the beginning. The second had been a little harder, it had taken a trip down to South America and a genuine confrontation with some Templar guards—but they’d been able to make a clean escape from there, too, and everything was fine. No one had been hurt.

And now, Egypt.

Rebecca and Shaun had been willing to pack everything up and haul them all off to Africa, but William had put his foot down. He’d go alone, he’d insisted. No reason for all of them to go, when he could take care of it himself.

William is deep in the Cairo museum now, it’s a little past midnight here, which means it’s right around dinner time back in New York. Rebecca and Shaun will be sitting down to eat, probably keeping a close eye on Desmond as he lies in the animus.

William, on the other hand, is neck deep in Templars. Maybe, after two other battery thefts, the Templars are starting to catch on to the fact that these batteries are important. Security had been an absolute nightmare to sneak past on the way in, but William had managed it. Just.

It’s only after he manages to get hold of the battery and is on his way out, that he messes up. A beat too slow, a step out of place, and a single museum guard spots him. That’s all it takes, because before William has a chance to react or recover, the museum guard has shouted and summoned a horde of Abstergo guards, and even if the museum guards are easy to avoid, these new Templars are not. William recognizes a face or two from his way in, creeping past them and around them as he heads in to get the battery. Rebecca’s shown him pictures, going over and over the intel they have on the Templars until William knows it all by heart. He recognizes Sigma Team by now.

He manages to take one or two out. Incapacitate a few more. And then hide for a while, long enough to think it through, go through every possible angle, and realize that there’s no way he’s getting out of this alive. He goes out swinging, takes another two down, and then feels the sharp shock of someone hitting him in the wrong way in the wrong place and he just goes down.

The next thing he knows is waking up in a room—he’s never been there before, but he’s heard a lot about it. Desmond’s talked about it, more than once. This is the room where Desmond had been held when Abstergo kidnapped him, and something in that realization makes William’s blood run cold.

He stands, and walks across the room, his pace surprisingly steady. Right there on the other side of the room is the tablelike slab that is Abstergo’s animus.

William glances around and sees three different security cameras pointing at him. It doesn’t matter if they see him. There is a certain freedom that comes from knowing that not only is he almost certainly dead at this point anyway, but he’s also face to face with the machine that had hurt his son so much.

Face stony, William walks around the whole animus. He’s looking for… yes, there. A power cord. William bends down, to where the cord disappears under the animus. Behind him he hears the door to the room sliding open, but William just ignores the sound. From where he’s at, the angle is a little odd, but he can just manage to get his arm around and hit at the core of the machine.

“No!”

He whacks away at it a second time, giving Rebecca a mental thank you for one of her rambling explanations about how the animus worked. Hers might look different on the outside, but it still ran on more or less the same guts.

The animus sparked and spat at him, then with a satisfying whir, it powered down, lights flickering off. William yields to the sudden pressure on his shoulders, not because the hands grabbing at him are strong, but because he’s done with what he’s doing. When he’s standing again, William turns and wrenches himself away from the person holding him. When he turns around, there’s an absolutely livid old man glaring at him.

“Warren Vidic, I assume,” William says, and without waiting for an answer, he punches the man full in the face.

-//-

December 14, 2012

-//-

They keep him tied up after that. It’s hard to tell exactly how much time passes while William is a prisoner, but at a guess he’d say two or three days. He’s not exactly sure  _ why  _ they’re bothering to keep him prisoner, especially when the animus is gone so there’s no  _ possible  _ reason to keep him here. He doesn’t understand it, not until Desmond just walks in one day, holding the apple, and William realizes. Of course. This is a hostage situation, and Desmond, and the apple, are the ransom.

And Desmond had come. For him. There’s a moment when the two of them just look at each other, then William gives Desmond a little nod, and Desmond grins, and holds up the apple.

It’s certainly not the only time William has ever had to escape from the Templars, in the whole of his life as an Assassin. But it’s definitely one of the more memorable times. The apple is… it tears through Vidic and his guards, and they drop like flies. William isn’t sure whether they’re dead or only unconscious, or mesmerized, or something else. It’s kind of creepy, but they don’t have time to stop and study that right now. William only pauses long enough to grab the battery he’d been sent after in the first place—Vidic’s been trying to get him to explain what it’s for, and William had managed to stay silent.

“You shouldn’t have come,” he tells Desmond as they run. “You should still be trying to find the key.”

“I thought you wanted me out of the animus anyway,” Desmond jokes, flashing William a quick grin. It fades quickly as he goes back to focusing on the apple. William puts a hand on his shoulder, and Desmond leans against him. William guides the two of them out as Desmond focuses in on the apple. When they’re outside, William gives Desmond a little squeeze on the shoulder. It takes Desmond a second or two to unclench his hands from the apple, to breathe, to blink himself back into the real world from wherever he’d gone while he was using the apple. “Good job,” William tells him quietly, as they hurry toward where Desmond says Shaun and Rebecca are waiting. “But you didn’t have to do all that for me. You didn’t have to—”

“You’re my dad,” Desmond says. “We’re family. We’re a team.”

William gives him a small smile as they climb into the van. “I did something right, raising you,” he says.


	19. Chapter 19

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> If for some reason you're popping in after reading the beginning like... a million years ago, I just posted chapters 14-19 all together. Please go back to 14!

September 1, 2012

-//-

There’s something wrong when Desmond gets back to his apartment, but he can’t quite put his finger on it when he first walks in. At first glance, everything looks normal. The living room is just the way he’d left it this morning, dark and just a little bit messy. He’ll have to clean tat up before his dad comes over for dinner today.

Desmond reaches over and turns on the lamp, kind of still looking around to try and figure out why something feels off. But there’s nothing. Just his normal apartment, his normal stuff thrown everywhere, his normal… everything.

Okay. So maybe he’s just overreacting. Feeling slightly foolish, he shakes his head like that will just force the thoughts away, and let him concentrate again.

Desmond’s thoughts drift away from the weird feeling still pervading the apartment, and lets himself relax. He’s just being paranoid. It’s still kind of creepy, coming home to an empty apartment. Coming home to a dark, empty little set of rooms just isn’t a lot of fun.

Moody now, Desmond goes through the motions of putting his things away, getting his stuff set up for dinner. He hasn’t even thought about what he’s going to make yet, and he probably doesn’t have anything in the fridge because he never has anything in the fridge when he needs it, and—

There’s something beeping somewhere in the room, but it takes Desmond a while to notice it, and then a few minutes after that to track it down. He finally finds the source, a small black box under his table that looks like some high tech spy gadget. A transmitter or something. Desmond reaches down to pick it up, confused and unsettled. This  _ definitely  _ isn’t something he’s seen before, so that means—what, that there was someone in his apartment, planting this spy shit?

For a second, Desmond just stands there in the middle of the room, staring at the thing, trying to figure out why it’s there. Then he hears footsteps running down the hall, heavy and purposeful, but by the time it’s occurred to him that he should actually do something, it’s too late.

Three brawny men burst through his door, and Desmond has time to take in the Abstergo logo (and Desmond can’t help but think Abstergo? Really? Desmond knows his dad hates the company but he’s never stopped to question why before) on their jackets, the shouts of  _ subject is contained, objective in sight— _

Desmond has no idea what they’re here for, he has no idea why they want him or why they would bother to bug his apartment, or what’s going to happen now. Worst of all, he doesn’t know what to do. Desmond just about has enough time to be flat out terrified, to imagine his dad’s reaction (and  _ fuck _ , what if Abstergo comes after his dad, too?) when Desmond doesn’t show tonight. It’s a horrible mental image, but it’s what sticks with him as the horde of strangers rush into his apartment.

Then the closest man slams his head against the wall, and Desmond doesn’t know anything else for a long time. The next time he wakes up, he’ll be in the animus, and hearing about the Assassins for the very first time.

-//-

December 21, 2012

-//-

The third battery turns out to be the last one they need. The whole Temple lights up when they get back and Desmond plugs it in. Which is great, except that now they’re definitely coming to the end. Desmond doesn’t know exactly what that end will entail, but…

But it’s not going to be  _ good _ , is it?

Desmond tries to hide it, and most of the time he thinks it works. It’s easy in the animus, of course, because anything Desmond is feeling or thinking is drowned out by what’s going on in Connor’s life.

Outside the animus, of course, it’s harder. Desmond grows tenser with every day that passes, right up until Connor finds the key. And that’s it. That’s the end of the memories that Desmond needs to see. They know where to go now, and there’s no reason to wait except for an odd, formless dread that Desmond just can’t shake off.

He doesn’t tell anyone else about how he’s feeling, because this is supposed to be what they’ve all been looking for. And even his dad doesn’t notice that Desmond is having some serious foreboding about whatever’s going to come next.

“You wanna drive, Desmond?” Rebecca asks, dangling the keys in front of him, jolting him out of his increasingly morbid train of thought.

“What?”

“ _ I’ll _ drive, Rebecca,” Shaun says, grabbing the keys and giving her a superior look. “I don’t think Desmond’s driven anything more advanced than a carriage lately. I don’t feel like putting my life in danger just now.”

“You’re an Assassin,” Desmond says, in a good approximation of a joking voice. “Putting yourself in danger is literally the job description.”

“I’m driving,” Shaun repeats, and Desmond rolls his eyes as his dad gives a little amused snort of laughter.

“So do we have an actual location for the key?” Desmond asks, changing the subject. “Seeing it in the animus is helpful, but it’s not like we can just plug that into mapquest and drive down there.”

“The animus has a geomapping feature,” Rebecca says, with her usual amount of pride for one of the new features she keeps adding into the animus. “I can use that to translate it into modern coordinates, find a nearby address, and then plug  _ that  _ into mapquest.”

“Oh,” Desmond says. He hadn’t actually been expecting that. “Well—”

“It’s only a couple hours away,” Rebecca says, grinning in excitement. “Ready?”

“Let’s go.”

The drive to get the key is a little different from the trips they’ve had to take before, to get the batteries. This isn’t breaking into a towering skyscraper in Manhattan, it’s not a cross continental trip to a wrestling match crawling with security guards. It’s just a late night drive up the highway to the small town that’s grow up around where the Homestead once was.

“So what happens next?” Desmond asks, when they’re halfway there.

“We’re going to get the key,” Shaun says. “Then we’re going to unlock that back room in the Temple, and then I’m pretty sure the precursors are going to screw with us some more.”

“Yea,” Desmond says. “But I mean after that.”

“Then we do it all again,” his dad says. “Are you ready for that?”

Desmond meets his dad’s eyes, and asks, “Are you?”

Neither of them answers, because maybe neither of them wants to hear what the other would say. This isn’t the life Desmond thought he was going to grow up into. It’s the life his dad thought he’d left behind.

After a second, they look away. Whether they’re ready or not, this was the life they have now. And really… even with the kidnapping, even with the animus, it’s not all bad. “Thanks,” Desmond says quietly, when they’ve driven a little while farther.

“For what?”

“For being here.”

Because ready or not, Desmond knows that whatever comes next, it’s going to be a lot easier to face with his dad at his side.

-//-

He’s actually feeling better on the way back to the Temple. Getting out in the fresh air, feeling almost normal—apart from actually having to dig up Connor’s grave to get the key, that had really freaked him out for a minute, he’d had to step away before the bleeding effect got the better of him.

Anyway. The point is, Desmond’s feeling better,  _ right  _ up until the moment when they actually have to use the key. Stepping through that barrier that’s been so impenetrable all the time they’ve been in there…

“It never really felt like a Temple before,” his dad says dryly, as they creep deeper in than they’ve ever been able to go before. “But this….”

“It feels a little like trespassing,” Desmond says. Like they’re somewhere they’re not supposed to be, like they’ve stumbled into something bigger than themselves.

“ _ Precursors _ ,” his dad says scathingly, and Desmond cracks a nervous grin.

And then they get to the end, where a flickering projection of Juno is waiting for them, with a smug smile on her face that Desmond absolutely does not like. He listens, increasingly numb, as Juno explains exactly what needs to happen next. Either he sacrifices himself, frees her, and saves the world from an impending apocalypse by way of solar flare, or… he doesn’t. He lives, but the world ends.

Not really a choice at all, when he looks at it like that.

Desmond makes Rebecca and Shaun leave, just in case something goes horribly wrong, and Juno comes to life and like eats them or something. But his dad won’t go, and Desmond… to be honest, he doesn’t try very hard.

“You could go,” is as much as he bothers saying. “The Assassins could definitely use you.”

But his dad shakes his head. “The most good I’ve done since I got back to the Assassins is get kidnapped,” he says firmly.

“ _ Not _ true. You’ve helped keep us all safe—”

“I haven’t been very much help at all,” his dad says, calmly. “And I wish I could have done more. I hope I have a chance to help more in the future.”

“Dad…”

“But I  _ can  _ be here for you.”

Desmond feels like he’s going to cry. And why not? He’s about to… he’s…

_ Fuck _ , he doesn’t want to die.

His dad’s not crying, though. He’s dry eyed and intensely serious, and it helps give Desmond just a little bit of courage as he steps forward, and presses his hand to the orb. He feels his dad’s hands on his shoulders, supporting him, holding him up, and Desmond tries to keep his attention on that, because as soon as he touches the orb there’s just this searing, burning, all consuming pain. It races through his hand, up his arm, spreading through his whole body until all he can  do is tilt his head back and just scream.

Finally, it ends. It’s over, and Desmond falls to the ground, crumpling,  legs going out at odd angles. His vision is fading, but it’s more than just that. It’s his his mind going dark, it’s  _ Desmond  _ that’s fading away.

The pressure on his shoulders hasn’t gone away, and Desmond realizes his dad hasn’t let go of him. Desmond leans into him, and closes his eyes.

“I love you,” his dad says, softly, voice choked up by tears. If Desmond could have, he would have rolled his eyes. He already knows that. He’s never doubted that.

And what comes next is a thick kind of darkness, like sinking slowly into warm water. The very last thing he knows is his dad, still holding him, and so right up until the end, there is no fear.

It’s not the worst possible way to go.

**Epilogue**

William sits on the cold ground of the temple for quite a while. He holds Desmond after his eyes gradually drop close. He holds Desmond as he goes limp, as his breath and heartbeat go slow, slow, slow... 

He hasn’t lost anyone in a long time, but he remembers how it goes. They’ll have to leave Desmond’s body here, it’ll slow them down too much. But William feels like it’s tearing him into two, leaving Desmond here

“Go,” he whispers to himself. “Go.” With an effort, he tears his eyes away from Desmond, turning around to face the exit—and Juno.

He hadn’t heard her there, although she’s nothing but a hologram so maybe there’s nothing to hear. But there she is, watching him or watching Desmond, a small smile curled around her face like a snake. Instinctively, and pointlessly, William steps between her and Desmond.

“I would not harm him,” Juno says, voice echoing more than it should. It’s almost musical, really, harmonizing with itself in an inhuman sort of way.

“You can’t,” William says, his own voice surprisingly clear. He feels like he should be crying, but maybe tears will come later. “You’ve already killed him.”

“He played his part.”

“You shut your mouth—”

“And I am grateful.”

Something about her, her voice, her eyes, something, puts a fire in in William that he hasn’t felt for a very long time. He lets that fire swell, burning inside him until he feels like he's going to burst with the passion. And then.

And  _then_.

And then, there's the faintest hint of movement from Desmond. A breath, shallow beyond belief, but present. William catches the movement out of the corner of his eye, and he's back down on his knees in an instant. 

"As I said," Juno says, voice infuriatingly smug. "I am grateful. And perhaps..." William isn't looking at her anymore, but he hears her voice fracture as her volume drops a little. "Perhaps I have loved as well, before."

William's hands dance over Desmond, checking pulse, breathing, feeling warmth come back into his too-nearly-dead son. This doesn't change anything. Juno, loose on the world? No. No, he is  _not_ going to allow that. But that's a fight for another day, and today's fight is  _Desmond_.

When Desmond opens his eyes, just a fraction, and looks around at him in obvious shock, William breaks down into tears. He doesn't even notice when Juno disappears from behind him.

Another day. They'll fight another day.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I will admit that I wrote this like... six, nine months ago, something like that, I decided that the only way I could end this was for Desmond to actually die. There was a beautiful, heart wrenching ending that I spent a lot of time on...
> 
> And then I opened it back up today, almost started crying, and rewrote it immediately. I'm sorry! Desmond Miles is an important fictional character to me. So hopefully it doesn't work too badly, and hopefully the rest of the last few chapters were ok too... didn't leave any embarrassing typos or notes to self in there anywhere. xD I legitimately haven't even looked at this since February, so... a solid six months? Sorry all. Hope it was worth the wait.


End file.
